DMCA Still Faces Its First Criminal Test

[Seth David Schoen]

R. A. Hettinga writes:

> http://www.law.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=law/View&c=Article&cid=ZZZU66KQBZC&live=true&cst=1&pc=0&pa=0&s=News&ExpIgnore=true&showsummary=0
> 
> 
> 
> March 28, 2002
> 
> 
>  DMCA Still Faces Its First Criminal Test
> 
> Criminal case will test Digital Copyright Act

The article by Elinor Mills Abreu at

http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/020328/crime_bootleg_2.html

claims that _two_ people have already been convicted of, or pleaded
guilty to, criminal DMCA violations -- one unnamed person in Nebraska
and one person just recently in California.  My colleague Robin Gross
is quoted as saying that the Mohsin Mynaf case is "the first time the
DMCA has been used to go after someone who is actually infringing
copyright".  Mynaf was apparently prosecuted for using a Macrovision
corrector in the course of infringing the copyright on movies
(presumably an act-of-circumvention case rather than a tools case).

The first _civil_ case brought under the DMCA's anticircumvention
provisions is probably the little-known _RealNetworks v. Streambox_,
in Federal court in Washington state, which came to an unhappy end in
2000.

The Elcomsoft case might have the distinction of being the first
criminal case involving a _challenge_ to the anticircumvention
provisions, but it isn't the first criminal case in which they've been
used.

Another colleague of mine is compiling a list of all court cases in
which anticircumvention claims were brought under the DMCA.  If you
know of any -- other than the ones EFF has been involved in -- please
let me know.

-- 
Seth Schoen
Staff Technologist                                schoen at eff.org
Electronic Frontier Foundation                    http://www.eff.org/
454 Shotwell Street, San Francisco, CA  94110     1 415 436 9333 x107

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