[Yes, this fellow could be sued, I suppose, but the suit would almost certainly be thrown out of court. (Rule 11 sanctions, anyone?) Also, I'm confused: Princeton has guaranteed a legal defense, but the student self-censored the paper anyway to avoid hypothetical DMCA liablity? Maybe Alex can explain. See: http://news.com.com/2010-12-950229.html --Declan] --- "Straining Digital Copyright Law, Junior Paper Exposes Protection Flaws in CDs" Daily Princetonian Online (11/21/02); Tauberer, Joshua Alex Halderman, a senior computer science major at Princeton University, has acknowledged the possibility that he could be sued by the music industry for allegedly violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) if he presents a junior paper at the ACM Conference on Computer & amp;Communication Security in Washington in the spring. His paper focuses on weaknesses in the copy-protection systems of certain CDs, which exploit certain software security holes. However, Halderman does not include any methodology for bypassing such safeguards, and notes that he would only if the DMCA did not exist. The student says the university has promised to provide him with legal defense if a DMCA lawsuit is filed against him. Princeton has previously supplied indemnification for students and faculty when they were carrying out certain duties for the university, but General Counsel Peter McDonough notes that defending research for research's sake is without precedent. He adds that such a move carries the risk of having his office accused of censorship if it refuses to recommend legal defense for researchers; nevertheless, there are strong arguments that the DMCA represents a serious threat to legitimate academic research. Last year, the music industry sent a letter of warning to Princeton professor Edward Felten, claiming that they would sue him for breaking the DMCA if he published certain research. The university responded by forming a committee that assesses threats to academic freedom by judicial strong-arming, according to committee chair Edward Groth. http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2002/11/21/news/6433.shtml ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ Recent CNET News.com articles: http://news.search.com/search?q=declan -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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