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Study GuideCopyright Updates
Electronic Copyright and Intellectual Property Issues
Photocopying vs. Copying Electronic Documents
Trademarks and the Web
Case Study: Lego Company Database Copyright Protection
Legislation is now in the works in the US and the EU. With its passage, legislation is going to be drawn up in the United Nations through the World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO. If this legislation is passed then over 171 countries will have database copyright legislations. Currently, 18 EU nations have some type of database copyright legislation.
DeCSS by itself is not very usefull, but it is the key component needed to copy the contents of the DVD to some other media. By extension, it is the key component to pirate movies, something the Movie Picture Association of America(MPAA) is very concerned about. In an effort to thwart the spread of this algorithm, the MPAA sought an injunction against 2600 The Hacker Quarterly, a newletter geared toward hackers and also a mirror of the DeCSS algorithm. Specifically, the MPAA sought action against the owner Emanuel Goldstein. Goldstein argued for First Amendment protections citing that the code that represented the algorithm is a form of speach just like any other publication. After a drawn out trial, Judge Kaplan ruled against 2600 citing that its sole purpose was to break the copy protection efforts of the MPAA and thereby infringe on their rights. His order to cease all posting of this code has essentially been muted by the fact that enraged citizens have mirrored the code in servers outside of the United States jurisdiction, as well as getting it printed onto various "memorabilia" like t-shirts and coffe mugs. Also see the DeCSS section of the DMCA Study Guide
A challenge was made by SDMI.org to the hacker community to break these proposed copy protection techniques. The community responded by breaking at least two of the five proposed methods, other attempts are still in dispute. Other IssuesCopyright laws are being challenged in many different ways. For further information please look at the sub categories under Linking and Fair Use.
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