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OffTopic > Longevity of DMCA?

#29172 - Abscissa - Fri Nov 12, 2004 8:12 pm

I suppose I'll make this a poll post.

Since the DMCA appears to be regarded so widely as a bad thing, draconian even, do you think there's a chance it'll ever get overturned? I've been wondering about this because we can see all the fuss over the Induce Act and how much certain groups are fighting against it, but as far as I can tell the DMCA is just accepted as being here to stay despite the common stance that it's a bad thing.

Being a game development forum, I doubt there's many people, if any, here that are strongly familiar with US law. But if there are, I'd be interested to hear if it is or isn't even possible at this point for it to be overturned, and if it is, what it would take.

#29174 - mymateo - Fri Nov 12, 2004 8:55 pm

The DMCA is a bit of a sore spot for developers, software or hardware, homebrew of professional. I don't know a whole lot about it, but it would seem to me the only people interested in keeping it are the financial giants. It is for that reason I chose "Possibly" instead of "Definately", that being the giants would try to stop it whilst everyone else is sick and tired of it.

It's much like any other copyright law, except that people now have the right to get pissed off if their software does the same thing. Much like Microsoft did to VirtualDub after its v1.3c release...

Quote:
Support for ASF and MPEG-4 V3 has been removed at the
request of Microsoft. I can't tell you how disappointed
I am at this, but Microsoft says they have intellectual
property rights, and I can't do anything about it.
This makes me very sad.


It doesn't say so, but I bet M$ used the DMCA as leverage.

I don't know if this makes any sense, but that's my two cents. I, for one, believe that the DMCA will either dissolve into regular copyright laws OR be re-written to be more or less specific. I would say more specific, but know the screwed up way things work it'd probably become more vague, allowing MORE people to get upset over LESS, even though this would be the reason WHY it was rewritten... damn fat cats.

#29178 - tepples - Fri Nov 12, 2004 10:02 pm

The Supreme Court decision upholding the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act in Eldred v. Ashcroft implied that the majority of the Court found the fair use defense sufficient to protect free speech from copyright-related interference. Once DMCA opponents manage to create dissent among the appeals circuits in the interpretation of the DMCA, they could potentially use Eldred as a wedge to break the DMCA if somebody can show that it unduly interferes with the ability to exercise fair use.
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