Bunnie Huang, Matt Green, and the EFF are suing the U.S. Government over §1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That’s the part of the act that prohibits bypassing software restrictions on copyrighted material. The original intent was to prevent music and movie piracy but, of course, the act has been abused to prevent such things as third party printer toner cartridges and even coffee capsules for Keurig coffee machines.
Huang and Green are concerned about the effect §1201 has on security research. The act makes it very difficult to do good faith security reviews of software and this has disastrous consequences for the public because flaws go undiscovered except by criminals who seek to abuse them.
We can only hope that the plaintiffs prevail but I’m not very sanguine about their chances. The industry is ferocious in their support of the law and will fight any attempt to chip away at it.
Both Green and Huang have posted remarks about the suit on their blogs. Green’s, especially, is a detailed rationale for the suit and explains what they hope to accomplish.