Professor Ed Felton’s Freedom to Tinker weblog is an excellent resource for those of us concerned about copyright, Digital Rights Management (DRM), and the survival of Fair Use. As I noted before, rightsholders were pretty successful in getting the DMCA passed 5 years ago; this law tilts the playing field drastically in favor of folks like the RIAA. Here’s a real-world example.

Big Music hates the idea that you can copy your CDs to your computer and share those files. Actually, they hate the idea that you can even copy the files to anything, since every copy you make, to them, represents a lost sale (a wholly false assertion, but never mind that for now). Consequently, they’ve been working for years to figure out a way to copy-protect their CDs so that digital reproduction is, if not impossible, then very restricted. These efforts have not met with much success; quite famously, one copy-protection method tauted as “the best ever” a year or so ago turned out to be circumventable with a green sharpie.

Well, they’re not giving up (notwithstanding the “success” the software industry has had with copy protection; many of you may remember what a PITA that was with the likes of Lotus and dBase 15 years ago). SunComm has released what they insist is the most secure anti-copying technology yet.

As it happens, Prof. Felton cites a paper today pointing out that you can probably circumvent it by holding down the shift key in Windows when you load the CD. (He’s citing this, which is an interesting read.)

The not-so-interesting part? Publishing this paper may well be a criminal violation of the DMCA, since it contains information on how to circumvent a copy protection scheme. Does this sound right to you? No? Well, that’s the DMCA for you. It doesn’t matter what you plan to DO with the copy — e.g., putting tracks from a CD you own on your iPod is just as bad as uploading them to a thousand college kids via Kazaa. All they’d care about is that you circumvented their copy protection, and that’s illegal — and criminal, not civil.

The Agonist — an interesting read most days, by the way — is running a summary of the Diebold voting machine saga, including a rather exhaustive list of their attempts to silence critics through legal skullduggery (instead of, say, actual responses and rebuttals). Read this. No, really.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (a fine group you should join) has released a report on the unintended consequences of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), a far-reaching revision of American copyright law that essentially erases the concept of Fair Use. Please read this, and then contact your congresspeople. Job One: Axe PATRIOT. Job Two: Axe the DMCA.

NPR may have edited a transcript to remove commentary about Justice giving the White House a day’s reprieve on the “preserve all evidence” order in re: the Plame affair. This is tantamount to a license to destroy evidence, and (if granted) came directly from Ashcroft.

The questions, then, are “Why did NPR do this, if they did?” and “When will we here more of this story, if ever?”

Sen. Arlen Spector (R-Penn) has joined the voices calling for John Ashcroft to recuse himself from the CIA leak investigation. Ashcroft employed possible suspect and White House aide Karl Rove during a number of campaigns prior to his appointment as A.G.