Week 3

Last week we saw how the digital music revolution swept the web. This week, we explore the proposition that another shoe will drop: technology backed up by law can beat back P2P and lock music up tight. This session will address the technological advances related to so-called trusted systems and the legal mechanisms set in place by the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The first piece tries to answer the question you may be asking yourself at this moment ("What's a trusted system?") and explores what the advent of these technologies means for content control. We'll explore the drawbacks of these technologies, and the possibility that trusted systems that aren't perfect may still be good enough for their creators' purposes.

Readings:

• Jonathan Zittrain, What the Publisher Can Teach the Patient: Intellectual Property and Privacy in an Era of Trusted Privication (First half only, up to the section on privacy)
• A Constitutional Right to Decode, Declan McCullagh, Wired
• Gallery of CSS Descramblers
• Hacker Arrest Stirs Protest, Declan McCullagh, Wired
• New Copyright Bill Heading to DC, Declan McCullagh, Wired
• Check out http://www.sdmi.org/
• SDMI Code-Breaker Speaks Freely, Declan McCullagh, Wired
• SDMI Letter to Prof. Ed Felten
• DVD Copy Control Assn. v. Bunner, 113 Cal.Rptr.2d 338 (CA App. 2001)
• Optional: Julie Cohen, A Right to Read Anonymously: A Closer Look at "Copyright Managemen" in Cyberspace," 28 Conn. L. Rev. 981 (1996)

Thursday Class at MIT: The DMCA (Abelson, Weitzner)

Before class, read the following:

• Read the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, with special attention to the anticircumvention provisions in section 103. You can also find this, as enacted into law, in the US code, Title 17, Chapter 12.
• Read the District Court opinion (PDF) and final judgement (Aug. 2000) in Universal Studios v. Reimerdes.
• Read the Appeals Court decision (Nov. 2001) in Universal Studios v. Reimerdes.
• Read Part 1 (through Chapter 6) of Lessig's Future of Ideas.