Hey Siglinuxers-

I did a little poking around on Congress's web site, and found the bills
that the last two posts refer to.  Theses are the bills:
----
WIPO Copyright and Performances and Phonograms Treaty Implementation Act
of 1997 (Introduced in the
Senate)[S.1121.IS]

WIPO Copyright Treaties Implementation Act (Introduced in the
House)[H.R.2281.IH]

Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (Placed in the
Senate)[S.2037.PCS]

Digital Era Copyright Enhancement Act (Introduced in the
House)[H.R.3048.IH]

Digital Copyright Clarification and Technology Education Act of 1997
(Introduced in the Senate)[S.1146.IS]
-----
These can be easily found by using searching for "WIPO".

I'm not lawyer, but as far as I can tell all of these bills are intended
to restrict commercial production of copyright infringement software. 
This is the sort of stuff that will certainly be availble blackmarket to
overcome copyright protections on digital video disk and similar mass
media copyrighted products.  All of the bills contain language similar to
the following, which explicity limits the application of this law to
copyright infringement via electronic methods. 

[the language]
---------
(b)(1) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public,
provide or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service,
device, component, or part thereof that--

          `(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of
circumventing protection afforded by a technological protection
measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under
title 17 in a work or a portion thereof;

          `(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or
use other than to circumvent protection afforded by a technological
protection measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright
owner under title 17 in a work or a portion thereof; or

          `(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert
with that person for use in circumventing protection afforded by a
technological protection measure that effectively protects a right of
a copyright owner under title 17 in a work or a portion thereof.

----

This is basically extending existing copyright protection acts to the
digital realm; there did not appear to be any language anywhere in these
bills that would restrict the usage of Satan or other system security
products.  The only downside I could see is that now it appears as if
digital copyright protection systems will not experience the vetting
process of open scrutiny of their security measures.  This will certainly
happen anyway by our good friends in the security community, but these
bills will force them to call company xyz and ask them "Can I have
permission to hack your copyright encryption schemes?".  This is actually
more detrimental to the companies, since it amounts to security via
obfuscation- never a very reliable way to insure that your encryption
software is secure. 

Anyway, just throwing in my $0.02

Jack

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