| So, some context: Xuzz (whom I work with) possibly brings this up as I often make such an argument for the jailbreaking exemption in reverse. Specifically, that people who say it is "now legal" under an exemption are incorrect, as it might still be the case that there are other laws that apply; it just means that this one law now doesn't. Additionally, I tend to make the argument that we didn't consider it to be "illegal" in the first place, but with jailbreaking the situation is somewhat different: the people opposing the exemptions actually cite as one of their reasons "you don't need an explicit exemption as you are covered by the blanket interoperability clause already". With regards to unlocking, I have not read all of the relevant history (I have generally avoided working on the unlocking tools for various reasons; if nothing else, I simply haven't personally needed them); the DMCA, though, is mostly supposed to apply to cases of clear copyright infringement, which this is not; it isn't quite "interoperability", though, either. In particular, there was a case I was interested in, with General Electric as the defendant (yay! ;P), which was hinging on the argument of whether the DMCA could apply to cases unrelated to copyright infringement (GE, by way of a company it acquired, apparently was doing unauthorized field service on a UPS made by a company that required a hardware security dongle to access the software it was running). The Harvard Journal of Law & Technology publishes the JOLT Digest, where they summarize various cases. This case was summarized there. http://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/software/mge-ups-systems-... The good news: > The Fifth Circuit held that the DMCA’s provisions apply to protections designed to prevent infringement of copyrighted material and not protection from mere access to that material. > In so holding, the court limits the DMCA to those cases where a defendant circumvents a protection that is designed to prevent infringement of copyrighted material. The bad news: > Barry Sookman provides an overview of the case and an analysis of the court’s ruling. Info/Law has a critical discussion of the DMCA in light of this case’s holding. > As pointed out by Barry Sookman, such a limitation is inconsistent with prior circuit court decisions and fails “to consider [] legislative history.” (I had actually forgotten about this case, and thereby had never actually seen the final court opinion. I guess I now have some reading to do this week ;P.) |