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cc-licenses - Re: [cc-licenses] Parallel Distribution and Non-Copyleft Licenses

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: James Grimmelmann <james AT grimmelmann.net>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] Parallel Distribution and Non-Copyleft Licenses
  • Date: Sat, 02 Dec 2006 12:09:21 -0500

Rob Myers wrote:
To address an earlier point, I am not sure that an undocumented pinout constitutes a TPM:

http://www.boingboing.net/2004/09/01/garage_door_openers_.html

http://www.boingboing.net/2004/10/26/printer_cartridges_a.html

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/08/25/court_dmca_cant_proh.html

The garage-door opener and third-party repair cases depended on the fact that the TPM did not bear a "reasonable relationship" to a copyright holder's rights. In the printer-cartridge case, the underlying work was not copyrightable. That is, in all three cases, once the defendant had broken through the TPM lock, copyright law made what they did explicitly legal. The results of those cases would likely have been different if the point of circumventing the TPM had been to make new copies of a copyrighted work protected by it.

The hypothetical DMCA undocumented pinout case would turn instead on whether the undocumented pinout actually "effectively" prevents copying of the work on the chip. That would be a 1201(b) issue, and all three of the cases above were 1201(a) "access" cases.

James




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