"A jury on Tuesday found a Russian software company not guilty of criminal copyright charges for producing a program that can crack antipiracy protections on electronic books.
The case against ElcomSoft is considered a crucial test of the criminal provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a controversial law designed to extend copyright protections into the digital age.
The company faced four charges related to directly designing and marketing software that could be used to crack eBook copyright protections, plus an additional charge related to conspiring to do so....
Because both the defense and prosecution agreed that ElcomSoft sold software designed to crack copyright protections, the case essentially turned on ElcomSoft's state of mind during the period it was offering the software.
After much wrangling among attorneys over the definition of the word 'willful,' the judge told jurors that in order to find the company guilty, they must agree that company representatives knew their actions were illegal and intended to violate the law. Merely offering a product that could violate copyrights was not enough to warrant a conviction, the jury instructions said." [CNET News.com]
[
