On trial: Digital copyright law

WASHINGTON--The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on Thursday in an attempt to overturn key portions of a controversial 1998 copyright law.
The suit asks a federal judge to rule that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is so sweeping that it unconstitutionally interferes with researchers' ability to evaluate the effectiveness of Internet filtering software.
By suing on behalf of a 22-year-old programmer who's researching the oft-buggy products, the civil liberties group hopes to prompt the first ruling that would curtail the DMCA's wide reach.
After the DMCA was used to intimidate Princeton professor Ed Felten and his colleagues into self-censoring a presentation last year, the law became an instant magnet for criticism. But so far, every judge has upheld the DMCA's broad restrictions on the "circumvention of copyright protection systems."
This case will be different, the ACLU hopes, because it features a sympathetic plaintiff, Ben Edelman, and because it involves the socially beneficial act of critiquing software that is frequently used in public schools and libraries. Edelman had testified as an expert witness in a case the ACLU brought against a federal law that compelled public libraries to install filters.
"I did considerable work for them in preparation for the (Children's Internet Protection Act) lawsuit, and remained interested in the software," Edelman said. "I started thinking about how to make my research that much better. What became clear to me was that what I really needed, one way or another, was a way to get the entire block list."

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