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 Tuesday, February 18, 2003
The Best-Laid Plans Of Copyright Law.... While articles trashing the DMCA and its many misuses are practically a daily occurance in the tech world, the mainstream press has been a lot slower to catch on. So, it's a bit of a surprise to see an article in Business Week talking about how the DMCA has been systematically abused to prevent competition, rather than to prevent piracy. Most of the article focuses on the already well-known details of the Lexmark DMCA case. However, I hope this leads to further articles in mainstream business publications pointing out the many many faults of the DMCA - and how it's doing much more harm than help for American businesses.
[Techdirt]
The DMCA apparently can be applied to everything, from printers to cars, to prevent innovation. I read a story today detailing how the DMCA was being used by a maker of garage door openers to prevent others from selling garage door openers. How in the world is this covered by copyrights or by media companies wanting to prevent piracy? The benefit of unintended consequences. 10:58:28 PM 
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The World's Online Informer:. Ernest Miller of LawMeme quotes and discusses an address by Joseph E. Sullivan, Director of Compliance and Law Enforcement Relations for eBay. Boasts Sullivan:
EBay has probably the most generous policy of any internet company when it comes to sharing information. [...]
Our policy is that if you are law enforcement agency you can fax us on your letterhead to request information: who is that beyond the seller ID, who is beyond this user ID. We give you their name, their address, their e-mail address, and we can give you their sales history without a subpoena.
We also do other things to facilitate your [law enforcement] investigation by looking around and doing some searches on our own, typically to see if there are some other user IDs associated with that thing.
Remarks Miller:
Remember when everyone got excited about the bookstore that was subpoened by Ken Starr in order to determine what books Monica Lewinsky purchased? Remember how the bookstore fought the subpoena? EBay doesn't even require a subpoena. EBay would have turned over the info with a mere request.
A mere request, I might add, from any law enforcement agency that sends a fax on their letterhead. Or, for that matter, anyone with a fax machine, a copy of Pagemaker and a few decent-looking fonts. There's secure authentication for you.
But never mind the quibbling. This will seem problematic or not depending on how much you trust our fine prosecutors and police. Certainly I can't imagine any news stories in the last few years that might make me less than totally enthusiastic about expanding police power indefinitely, and if you can, it's probably because you're guilty of something, citizen. [Electrolite]
Why I will never sell anything on ebay. Turning over my private information top anyone with a fax machine does not make me feel safe. 10:52:19 PM
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