Cory Doctorow, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); When the Copyright Office Meets, the Future Needs a Seat at the Table
"Every three years, EFF's lawyers spend weeks huddling in their offices, composing carefully worded pleas we hope will persuade the Copyright Office and the Librarian of Congress to grant Americans a modest, temporary permission to use our own property in ways that are already legal.
Yeah, we think that's weird, too. But it's been than way ever since 1998, when Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, whose Section 1201 established a ban on tampering with "access controls for copyrighted works" (also known as "Digital Rights Management" or "DRM"). It doesn't matter if you want to do something absolutely legitimate, something that there is no law against -- if you have to bypass DRM to do it, it's not allowed.
What's more, if someone wants to provide you with a tool to get around the DRM, they could face up to five years in prison and a $500,000 fine, for a first offense, even if the tool is only ever used to accomplish legal, legitimate ends."
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