March 19, 2024

How the DMCA Chills Research

I have a new piece in Slate, on how the DMCA chills security research. In the piece, I tell three stories of DMCA threats against Alex Halderman and me, and talk about how Congress can fix the problem.

The Chilling Effects of the DMCA: The outdated copyright law doesn’t just hurt consumers—it cripples researchers.

“These days almost everything we do in life is mediated by technology. Too often the systems we rely on are black boxes that we aren’t allowed to adjust, repair, or—too often—even to understand. A new generation of students wants to open them up, see how they work, and improve them. These students are the key to our future productivity—not to mention the security of our devices today. What we need is for the law to get out of their way.”

Comments

  1. Tom Pendleton says

    Given that the majority of our Congress Critters have little on no actual understanding of tech knowledge and that their votes have been bought and paid for by political contributions from those on the dark side; they only hope we have is for outfits like you, EFF, etc. provide tools w that your followers can use to pound the above message into our representative’s heads.