How you are allowed to use the audio, video, and other media you keep on your computers is
increasingly dictated by national and international law. There was a time when you could essentially
disregard this issue, but in the era where individual computer users have been successfully
sued by corporations and industry groups, a little more caution is required.
Copyright Protection Issues
The biggest factor in the new world of digital media policy is the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright
Act (DMCA). This law ostensibly establishes a framework for implementing several international
treaties concerning copyright protection.
The DMCA has been widely criticized because it seems to intrude on the free-speech provisions of
the U.S. Constitution. Many people view computer code as a protected form of speech. A conflict
arises because the DMCA forbids the development of applications that are designed to intentionally
circumvent content security. For example, Dmitry Sklyarov, a Russian cryptographer employed by
a Russian software company, ElcomSoft, was arrested by the FBI while attending a conference in
Las Vegas because he demonstrated an application that could decrypt Adobe eBooks. A jury found
Sklyarov and ElcomSoft not guilty in December 2002, but the point is that companies will use the
DMCA to litigate against those who publicize methods to decrypt encrypted content.
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