Chapter 2
Exercise 1: Applying the Anticircumvention and Anti-Trafficking
Rules of 17 U.S.C. § 1201
To see why and how the Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes law and technology
converge, take a close look at § 1201(a) through (c). Read these subsections
several times. Then consider how you might work with product designers
and engineers to exploit this law in the following businesses. For
each business, consider two questions. First, how would you arrange
the business or provide product security or other product features to take
maximum advantage of the protection afforded by this law? Second,
how might your precautions, to the maximum extent possible, avoid unlicensed
competition in that business, for example, by restricting competitors' distribution
or sale of compatible products or components (including software)? (You
do not have to specify how you would implement the technical aspects of
the security or business features that you recommend, only what they should
do. Specifying how is a job for the engineers.)
a. Your client would like to provide a Website offering up-to-the-minute
but thoughtful and incisive analysis of just-breaking current news events.
How should the client make the analysis available: directly from
an open Website, through streaming, downloading, or otherwise? Which
approach would, with the help of § 1201, minimize piracy and unlicensed
competition? What security precautions might you recommend to minimize
both piracy and unauthorized competition, for example, by rivals re-broadcasting
or re-posting your client's current analysis?
b. Your client makes remote-controlled, radio operated locks for
automobiles. A small handheld transmitter, like the radio-controlled
keys now used on many cars, controls the door locks, trunk lock, interior
lights, and ignition. The hand-held transmitter uses "rotating"
codes, so that the same transmitted code can never be used to open the
same lock twice in succession. Could you arrange the systems or
technology so that, under § 1201, no other manufacturer could offer competing
transmitters that would open the same locks?
c. Your client makes plows for farmers. Each of its plows
contains a complex electromechanical system designed to predict when each
prong of the plow (of which there are twelve to eighteen per plow) is
likely to break. Several electronic sensors are mounted along the
shank of each prong of the plow, and signals from them are constantly
monitored by a special computer, which causes a red light to glow when
the prong is predicted to break within two months. With luck and
proper use, this system allows a farmer to replace prongs in the shop
before they break down in the field and, with careful planning, even to
replace several about-to-break prongs at once. Can you help the
engineers design or modify a similar system in a way that will, with the
help of § 1201, prevent competing plow manufacturers from offering replacement
prongs for the plow?
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