This new title outlines how the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 is unsuitable for current consumer practices. In fact what Hector Postigo calls the “blind spots” of the DMCA gave rise to the digital rights movement and what is now commonly referred to as “hacktivism”. Excessive attempts to lock down content by making it accessible only with certain hardware, or by limiting the number of uses of content, or by restricting the manners in which consumers could use content are met with resistance by hackers. While hackers are often portrayed as criminals in the popular media, Postigo restores hackers to their rightful place as advocates of consumer rights and proponents of fair use.
The first part of the book provides background information on the policymaking process infrastructure of the early internet with a brief history of copyright in the USA. Many assumptions were made about how people would use digital content in the early days of the internet. Postigo points out that, in US hearings in the early to mid-1990s, it was the copyright owners and not the consumers of digital content who were seated at the table.
The second part of the book presents a series of cases deemed important to the development of the digital rights movement. Postigo calls the case in which Dmitry Sklyarov cracked Adobe's eBook Digital Rights Management (DRM) system and was arrested on 16 July 16 2001 “transformative”: Adobe experienced considerable backlash due to its choice to pursue harsh treatment of a postgraduate and reversed its decision. Activists were quick to spread the story, while Adobe went into damage control mode. The prosecution of people linking to DECSS source code in an effort to work around the content scrambling systems (CSSs) of commercial DVD players is another example Postigo highlights to show that digital rights advocates used freedom of speech arguments to justify their technological resistance.
Prostigo clearly makes the case that DRM mechanisms actually strip away fair use, replacing the 1976 Copyright Act, which allowed considerably more uses under the provision of fair use, with contracts that are more binding. While lobbying and hacking are both part of the digital rights movement, this book shows how technological resistance came about, making it an interesting read for those seeking an overview of the 1998 DMCA. This book is highly recommended for tertiary institutions with computer science and engineering programmes because of the context provided and policy issues addressed.
