IP: Declaration Filed Supporting Felten's DMCA Challenge in Digital Music Encryption Lawsuit by CRA

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> From: Cedar Pruitt @ Cyber [mailto:cpruitt () cyber law harvard edu]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2001 10:27 AM
> To: Cedar Pruitt @ Cyber
> Subject: Press Release: Declaration Filed Supporting Felten's DMCA
> Challenge in Digital Music Encryption Lawsuit


The following joint press release from the Berkman Center for Internet & 
Society at Harvard Law School and the Computing Research Association is 
available online at: 
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/felten/pressrelease8-14.html Please contact me 
with any questions. Thank you, Cedar

Cedar Pruitt The Filter <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filter> The Berkman 
Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School 
_________________________________ FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Cambridge, Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. (August 14, 2001) - BERKMAN 
CENTER FOR INTERNET & SOCIETY AND COMPUTING RESEARCH ASSOCIATION BACK RIGHT 
OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN MUSIC ENCRYPTION LAWSUIT. Calling the issue 
fundamental to free expression and academic research, the Berkman Center 
for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School represented University of 
Washington professor Edward Lazowska and the Computing Research Association 
(CRA), who on Monday submitted a declaration of support for Princeton 
University professor Edward Felten in a lawsuit asserting the right of 
computing researchers to reveal the findings of their academic work.

Professor Felten and a team of researchers were threatened against 
disclosing their analysis of a digital music protection scheme when they 
submitted their findings for publication at an information security 
conference in April. The scheme, called the Secure Digital Music Initiative 
(SDMI), was promoted with the claim that it could protect digital music 
against Napster-like copying. Berkman Center Fellow attorney Wendy Seltzer, 
who assisted Lazowska and the CRA, said,  "There is clearly something wrong 
when professors are afraid to study information systems or to publish their 
research."

The makers of SDMI organized a public contest, challenging researchers to 
remove the watermarks on a set of sample music clips. But after Felten and 
his team successfully cracked this protection scheme, the Recording 
Industry Association of America (RIAA) threatened suit under provisions of 
the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), thus forcing the researchers 
to withdraw their paper on the topic. The RIAA was joined by SDMI and 
Verance, one of the companies selling watermarking technologies.

Since Congress passed the controversial DMCA in 1998 with the intent to 
expand copyright protection, it has been the target of protest by 
researchers who argue that it threatens freedom of academic study, in part 
by including stipulations that block the means to analyze encryption 
technologies.

In June, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others took the initiative 
and filed a suit against the RIAA et al. on behalf of Felten and his team. 
Professor Lazowska's declaration supports Felten and other researchers 
seeking a declaratory judgment from the U.S. District Court for the 
District of New Jersey that the DMCA violates First Amendment and other 
constitutional rights by preventing the team from presenting its computer 
science research to the world. The Berkman Center for Internet & Society 
supported the suit as an expression of a "core component of its mission," 
according to Berkman Center executive director Eric Saltzman, "protecting 
openness and free expression on the Internet."

"CRA's members are deeply concerned that the DMCA will have a chilling 
effect on computing research," said Lazowska. "Much research in computer 
systems is based upon analysis - the careful examination of existing 
systems and approaches in order to understand what works well and what 
works poorly. Analysis is no less important when the system being studied 
is used to protect copyrighted works. There is a long tradition of open 
research - including open research in computer security and information 
hiding - that has driven our field forward. This tradition is in jeopardy 
because of the DMCA."

Seltzer said, "Computing research depends on experimentation and the free 
exchange of information, in the language of code, but the DMCA allows 
sellers of encryption systems to remove technologies from this discussion. 
Professor Lazowska demonstrates the chill the law casts on research and 
development and the imbalance created when researchers are forbidden from 
pointing out the flaws in technologies."

Saltzman said, "In just a few pages, Ed Lazowska demonstrates convincingly 
that building legal fences around ideas - in computer science, as in other 
fields of research - is hazardous for progress."

The Computing Research Association (www.cra.org <http://www.cra.org>) 
consists of approximately 200 North American academic departments of 
computer science and computer engineering; laboratories and centers in 
industry, government, and academia engaging in basic computing research; 
and affiliated professional societies. Lazowska, a member of the Board of 
Directors of the CRA and its Chair for the past four years, is the Bill & 
Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science at the University of Washington.



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