Schrödinger's Copyright · Thursday April 27, 2006 by Crosbie Fitch
Crosbie Fitch said 6846 days ago :
Here’s an example:
Copyright holder Alfred is distributing his copyrighted work (large amounts of rushes/footage of a movie he’s working on) via eDonkey to his wide and geographically disparate production team. The files are encrypted using a state of the art TPM to ensure that no unauthorised access is given to anyone else. Alfred is pleased that the DMCA helps secure his work by dissuading anyone considering circumventing his TPM.
However, copyright holder Bob suspects that Alfred’s footage contains excerpts of his work that he broadcast last year. So, Bob procures and utilises a circumvention device knowing that such circumvention is sanctioned by law for copyright holders suspecting that their copyright is being infringed.
Firstly, if circumvention devices are prohibited, where, pray tell, is Bob going to get his circumvention device?
One can imagine millions of copyright holders legitimately suspecting that millions of encrypted works being exchanged on filesharing networks are infringing their copyrights.
Are we to imagine that only a select few ‘copyright holders’ will be permitted by law to utilise circumvention devices?
Janet Hawtin said 6779 days ago :
Nicely put.
The problem is that our governments do not see it as their responsibility to reflect the interests of the people. Where’s the economic bottomline on that? Economic rationalism has tilted decmocratic process to only perceive value in monetary terms. Businesses win, people are irrelevant. Time for a world wide referendum against dmca and patents on medicines.
Crosbie Fitch said 6778 days ago :
The fact that the DMCA protects copyright holders, and pretty much anyone who can write, draw, or record themselves doing anything else, is also a copyright holder, is probably its Achilles heel and the key to its demise (if it is not repealed to preempt such an embarrassment).
Lonnie E. Holder said 5987 days ago :
Your scenario is not any different than any others of similar ilk in other areas. The government can only determine if someone is wrong-doing by means of a warrant they have no basis to obtain, so they illegally wire tap to gain evidence, but they cannot present the evidence from the wire tap because it is illegal, so they hope they can turn the illegally gained information into a path that is legal. Even this is but one example of the vast array of scenarios that occur in life. The DMCA did not create this concept, and neither will it end it, it is just another variation on it.
Videogamer said 4169 days ago :
Lonnie, you are wrong about that. They can NOT turn it “into a path that is legal” because ANY info gathered as a result of actions that were prompted by previously ILLEGALLY gathered info, are also banned, under the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine.
Schrödinger’s Copyright is a term I’ve coined to describe the dilemma faced by one copyright holder in circumventing the Technical Protection Measure of another copyright holder in order to determine whether or not their copyright is infringed. This dilemma is given jeopardy by the DMCA.
This applies in the case where the original copyright holder suspects that an encrypted file may contain a work that infringes their copyright.
The original copyright owner can only determine whether the potentially infringing work actually infringes their copyright after they have circumvented its encryption based TPM.
Either:
See also: