Day 18 -- DMCA

As we mentioned briefly yesterday -- we should never forget that Adobe used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to have a Russian programmer, Dmitry Sklyarov, arrested and imprisoned. His "crime"? Distributing a product designed to remove locks from eBooks so that they could be fully used like regular books.

This year, we've seen an attempt by Canada to introduce its own DMCA, with harsher penalties than the draconian US law. Michael Geist, law professor at the University of Ottawa states, the education provisions "[t]urn librarians into locksmiths" by requiring that they expire their digital materials after no more than five days.

One DRM activist, Zane writes on our blog "The DMCA does not protect creators. These overstepping boundaries are a burden to creativity, expression, culture, innovation, and the consumer."

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