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Tuesday, October 28, 2008

The DMCA 10, years on

If you can believe it, today is the 10th anniversary of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA. This is the sweeping piece of legislation that, among its many provisions, criminalized the hacking of digital rights management technologies. In the process, it also criminalized activities that were once perfectly legal and commonplace, such as making personal dupes of copyrighted materials you already owned. So thanks for rolling back our hard-fought fair use rights, technology and entertainment lobbies! It's been a great decade.

P.S. If you're searching for a more sympathetic account of the DMCA, you might want to check out this blog post.

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