Sony's malware malaise
Published: 07 Nov 2005 15:25 GMT
...on a Macintosh or in an old-fashioned CD player.
Meanwhile, dozens of other states are considering similar laws, each with slightly different wording. So is Congress.
The blunderbuss of the DMCA
In a bizarre twist, though, it's not only Sony that could be facing a
legal migraine. So could anyone who tries to rid their computer of
Sony's hidden anti-copying program.
That's because of Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which bans the "circumvention" of anti-copying technology.
"I think it's pretty clear that circumventing Sony's controls violates the DMCA," says Tim Wu, a Columbia University professor who teaches copyright law — violations of the DMCA include civil fines, injunctions, computer confiscations and even criminal penalties.
Wu noted that one possible reprieve might come from last year's ruling from a federal appeals court in a case dealing with garage door openers — it said no copyright violations were taking place, so no DMCA violation occurred. Then again, another federal appeals court objected to bypassing anti-copying technology used in DVDs, which is probably a closer analogy.
A bizarre result
If your head isn't spinning by now, it should be. It's a crazy result
when both Sony and its hapless customers could be embroiled in legal
hot water at the same time.
These citations to state laws, federal statutes and common law torts above should demonstrate an obvious point: The American legal system is, all too often, used as a weapon against businesses or individuals who can't hope to comply with every regulation on the books. Entrepreneurs write cheques to law firms instead of developing products. Guilt and innocence turn too often on technicalities rather than whether an action was inherently right or wrong.
Why? As Manhattan Institute fellow Walter Olson documents on OverLawyered.com, the US legal system is set up to encourage lawsuits. They're easy to file and difficult to dismiss. Plus, politicians receive attention by enacting new laws, not by repealing them. No wonder the Federal Register was growing by between 55,000 and 70,000 pages annually even by the first Bush presidency.
In one 1999 class action lawsuit ostensibly filed on behalf of flight attendants against tobacco companies, for instance, the attendants received nothing in the settlement while the lawyers pocketed $49m (£28m). After Microsoft's federal antitrust suit was over dozens of class action suits sprouted, yielding negligible benefits for consumers but fat paycheques for the lawyers involved.
Of course, malicious behaviour that harms someone else should be unlawful. But whatever happened to the concept of a few basic rules (don't steal, don't commit fraud) rather than thousands of pages of bureaucracy that few of us can hope to understand, let alone follow?
Previous
Did you find this article useful?
26 out of 88 people found this useful
Digg
Slashdot
Del.ici.ous
Stumble
Reddit
Full Talkback thread
2 comments
