Naval Postgraduate School
Fall 2007
Nov 29, 2007
Copyright, Digital Rights Management and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
Article I Section 8 of the US Constitution states, "To promote the
progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to
authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings
and discoveries." With the authority of this sentence, Congress
created a system of copyright to protect authors and patent to protect
inventors.
In this lecture we will look at the issue of copyright. When it comes
to computers, copyright has been successfully applied to computer
programs and the design of computer interfaces, as well as to text,
music, and video that can be processed by computer systems. In
countries outside the US copyright has also been applied to
collections of facts---a "database copyright."
From there we will move to a discussion about Digital Rights Management (DRM).
We've spent a lot of time during this class talking about digital
rights management issues, including two hours' discussion about the
Sklyarnov case. In this class we'll take a more principled look at the
issue of Digital Rights Management, the Digital Millennium Copyright
Act, and how these systems can be implemented (or at least assisted)
with trusted hardware.
Although a lot is written about DRM systems in popular forums like
Wired News and Slashdot, there is much to be learned by looking at the
academic conferences devoted to DRM issues. The Association for
Computing Machinery has been sponsoring a DRM Workshop since
2001. The articles are in ACM digital library; here are the programs
from the most recent workshops:
Professor Andrew Odlyzko of University of Minnesota gave the Luncheon
talk at DRM 2007. Although the talk doesn't seem to have been
recorded, you can read it. And you should---it's one of the assigned readings. He says that it's based on his 2005 talk for Management of Digital Rights, Berlin, Germany . We've assigned those slides also.
- Trusted Systems come to Hollywood
- Digital Rights Management Systems.
- Anti-circumvention
- Watermarking
Required Readings
- Digital rights management: Desirable, inevitable, and
almost irrelevant, Andrew Odlyzko, invited talk, DRM 2007.
- Odlyzko's 2005 slides
- The Ballad of DVD Jon, Laurie Freeman Rowell, netWorker, December 2005
- Consumers, Fans, and Control: What the Games Industry
can teach Hollywood about DRM, Susan Landau, Renee Stratulate, and Doug Twilleager, DRM 2005.
- The Customer Is Always Wrong: A User's Guide to DRM in Online Music, EFF
Required Listening
Optional Readings
- Defective Rights Management, Aaron Weiss, netWorker, March 2007.
- Securing Sensitive Content in a View-Only File System, Kevin Borders, Xin Zhao, Atul Prakash, DRM '06
- The Copyright Cage, Jonathan Zittrain, Legal Affairs, July/August 2003.
Cases
You don't need to read these, but here they are...
- US vs. LaMacchia (1994)
- Sony Corp. of
America v. Universal City Studios, 464 U.S. 417 (1984) (EFF website)
- A&M
Records v. Napster, 00-16401 (2001)
Napster
- Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios
Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., 222 US 55, 62-63 (6/27/05)
- Apple Computer Vs. Franklin Computer Corp., 714 F.2d 1240, 1246-48
(3rd Circuit 1983) (Copying of computer code without authorization
from the copyright owner is copyright infringement.)
- Kelley vs. Arriba Software; 336 F.3d 811, (9th Cir. 2003).
(Fair use is a defense to copyright infringement. In general,
the fair use defense is stronger if the defendant does not engage in
an act of copying which detracts from the revenue stream or
potential revenue stream of the copyright owner. Correspondingly,
in general, the fair use defense is weaker if the defendant produces
a work which detracts from the revenue stream or potential revenue
stream of the copyright owner.)
- LOTUS DEVELOPMENT V. BORLAND, 49 F.3d 807, 820 (1st Cir)
(Ideas, methods of operation and processes are not protectable
under the copyright law. Non-literal elements of computer code such
as structure, sequence and organization of computer code are not
protectable under copyright law unless there is literal copying of
protectable subject matter.)
- A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc. 239 F3d 1004 (9th Cir. 2001)
- Chambers v. Time Warner, Inc., 123 F. Supp. 2d 198; 2000
U.S. Dist. LEXIS 17475; 57 U.S.P.Q.2D (BNA) 1314, December 4, 2000
- eBay, Inc. v. Bidder's Edge, 100 F. Supp. 2d 1058; 2000
U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7287; 54 U.S.P.Q.2D (BNA) 1798, May 23, 2000
- New York Times Co. v. Tasini, 206 F3d 161 (1999)
- UMG Recordings, Inc. v. MP3.com, Inc. 92 F. Supp 2d 349 (S.D.NY 2000)
References
Links
- Wired's Threat Level Trial Coverage
- October 9: RIAA Juror: 'We Wanted to Send a Message
- Court order sealing names and addresses of jurors
Top 10 Copyright Pitfalls,
Copyright Clearance Center, 2005.
- The Digital Millennium Copyright Act Of 1998 (U.S. Copyright Office Summary), December 1998
-
Time for the Recording Industry to Face The Music: The Political,
Social and Economic Benefits of Peer-to-Peer Communications
Networks, Mark Cooper, Director of Research, Consumer Federation
of America Fellow, Stanford Law School Center for Internet and
Society, March 2005.
-
Will Fair Use Survive?: Free expression in the age of copyright control.
Marjorie Heins and Tricia Beckles, The Brennan Center for Justice, NY School of Law,
2005.
- Court Evaluates Meaning of
"Derivative Work" in an Open Source License, Laura A. Majerus, FindLaw.COM.
- [Google for more cases
related to Progress Software Corp. v. MySQL AB, Civil Action No. 01-11031 PBS, filed on June 15, 2001.]
- Findlaw.com's Intellectual Property
-
- SPA's Software Piracy
Slides
[SLIDES FOR TODAY'S CLASS]