Copyright and Anti-Circumvention: Growing Pains in a Digital Millennium

From a copyright perspective, it is the unauthorised copying of works that is the concern, not to what multitude of purposes may a piece of code or some physical device may be put. Systems similar to those used in the digital sphere for restricting use of a work could have been applied (and occasionally were) to physical media, such as the photocopy protection of important documents. However, the use of ink that faded after a few months, or pages that burst into flames after repeated turning, would have met severe consumer opposition, not to mention attempted and probably successful circumvention. Though it is easy to be deceived by its new, high-tech trappings, circumvention of devices that prevent access to information is a copyright issue only to the extent that it implicates real copyright concerns. Beyond that, blindly applying copyright rights and remedies to this realm both threatens some of the bedrock interests that copyright protects and obfuscates the real commercial issues that circumvention presents. Stretching copyright law beyond its limits may seem to be the quick fix to a perceived issue (at least by those whose profit margins need shoring up), , but in the end it can only result in an uncomfortable fit.