Legal battles are being fought over how you view protected material just as technology has given us more viewing choices. It’s no secret that incredible amounts of the wealth in the United States is intangible. Unlike gold, spices, tulips or real estate, you can’t actually touch intellectual property. It is nothing more than ideas and expressions of ideas. Consequently, you can’t protect them by locking them up. Your only hope is that the government will pass laws that both recognize your ownership rights and provide you with the means to prevent the unauthorized use of your property.

As mentioned in previous articles, the federal Constitution specifically gave Congress the power to protect the ownership rights of authors and inventors, 

Soon after that article was written, the Supreme Court issued the opinion and the plaintiffs lost. The law, sometimes called the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (or it is sometimes referred to as the Mickey Mouse extension act), was constitutional in the Court’s opinion. In effect the Court held that it would rely upon Congress to decide how long the limited Times should be and that the latest law was just another in a long series of extensions. At present, the life of the author plus 70 years is not too long. (The opinion is available ).

The changes in the copyright laws such as the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act ) have also attempted to solve problems resulting from improvements in technology. The advent of digital technology made it relatively easy to produce near perfect copies of some protected movies and music CD’s and DVD’s. 

It has also made it possible for the end user to selectively view the material. New fights are breaking out over how much control the end users have in viewing material that is legally obtained.  

One provision of the DMCA makes it a criminal offense to circumvent anti-piracy codes that DVD manufacturers routinely include in the movies. A Norwegian teenager, Jon Johansen, decided that he wanted to view a DVD movie that he purchased on a computer using the Linux operating system. To do so he wrote a program that bypassed the codes because the code did not work under the Linux system. He was taken to court under Norwegian law (not the DMCA because it, like all US laws, have very little effect outside the United States and its territories). A unanimous trial court cleared him of the charges.

Somewhat similar was the recent acquittal of a Russian programmer, Dmitry Sklyarov, and the company, ElcomSoft for which he worked. He had developed a program that unlocked documents encrypted using the Adobe’s eBook process. Although arrested and tried in the United States, the defendants were acquitted. That doesn’t mean the law was invalid, only that the jury didn’t believe the evidence proved guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. 

Now we have new challenges. Lexmark has recently filed a suit which charges another company, Static Soft, has violated the DMCA by manufacturing a chip that allows other companies to manufacture toner refill cartridges for Lexmark printers. The chip in question provides the necessary information for the printer, toner cartridge and the computer to exchange data necessary to control the printing process.

Finally, the new case that led to the paragraph that started this article. ClearPlay developed a filter that allows a person to view a DVD movie on a computer and skip the parts that might be offensive. The company has been sued, along with several others, by the owners of the copyright on the theory that the company is illegally altering the content. ClearPlay claims it merely provides its subscribers with a tool to avoid looking at parts of the movies and that it doesn’t edit or change the physical DVD in any way. The Plaintiffs, however, claim that alters the meaning and is not authorized.

So, don’t skip over any part of this column. You sure wouldn’t want to change my meanings.