The DMCA basically bars reverse engineering and circumvention. The article on the Copyright Act explained that the “anti-circumvention” provisions (sections 1201 et seq. of the Copyright Act) bar circumvention of access controls and technical protection measures. So that these technical protection measures and access controls are lumped together into a sort of “no-zone.”
This is a difficult issue to deal with because there are a lot of different applications of reverse engineering or circumvention that are motivated by many different things and have a wide range of affects. It seems that there is a significant push to change the act as it stands. I read in the article, “Soon It’ll Be OK To Tinker With Your Car’s Software After All” that:
Advocacy group Public Knowledge had requested that the Librarian of Congress allow people to make personal copies of their DVDs, but that petition was rejected. The group says that and other limitations in the ruling show that the DMCA overall needs to be rewritten — something that EFF and other advocacy groups have been pushing for a while.
It was interesting to see that people are now concerned with the preservation of our cultural heritage through digital means and how this act prevents the preservation. It appears that this law also inhibits people who are just trying to preserve the artifact instead of manipulate it, sell it or copy it for their own use. I do not have enough information whether or not this movement is positive or negative because I do not know enough information on whether or not decrypting and allowing information to be used by historians could cause a greater overall breach. Some information and opinions were provided by, “The Copyright Rule We Need to Repeal If We Want to Preserve Our Cultural Heritage” below:
Common wisdom would tell you, “Don’t copy things without permission, and everything will be fine.” But just as DRM-based copy protection prevents unauthorized users from making copies of digital goods, it also prevents cultural institutions from making copies for archival purposes. Every encrypted cultural work is locked, and to get the key, you have to pay the content owner…
The anti-circumvention provision of the DMCA was created primarily to protect DVDs; it did not anticipate our rapid shift to media-independent digital cultural works, so it is absurdly myopic when it comes to digital preservation.
There is also the unrelated issue that John Deere is now trying to tell people they don’t actually “own” their tractor, they are just driving them for the time being. I do not think this is appropriate because it takes away the ability for the owners of these vehicles to be able to fix them. When you originally bought a car, you were able to fix any of the mechanics of it if you had the capability. I do not think that this idea of ownership should change now that there is software involved. I read the article “We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Very Idea of Ownership” and saw that they were using a broad statement to enforce a law against a completely different circumstance:
And that’s how manufacturers turn tinkerers into “pirates”—even if said “pirates” aren’t circulating illegal copies of anything. Makes sense, right? Yeah, not to me either…
The pièce de résistance in John Deere’s argument: permitting owners to root around in a tractor’s programming might lead to pirating music through a vehicle’s entertainment system.
I don’t think that this software policing is really beneficial to a lot of people. If the software is in a device that you own, and that software affects the performance of the physical device that you have, I believe that you should be able to alter and fix it on your own. I can see the implication if you do not own certain rights to software that is separate from something you own. But if your tractor is broken, I think you should be able to fix it by yourself.
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