Thursday, October 28, 2004

Lexmark: The Meaning of "access" revisited...

Apparently, the recent ruling in the Lexmark case involves "access" issues. Ed Felten has a nice write-up over at www.freedom-to-tinker.com.

To my knowledge, the term "access" isn't defined in the US Copyright Code... This is a problem.

The only reasonable definition I can come up with is that "access" (within the context of Copyright) must mean the rendering of a protected work into a form that can be directly perceived by the consumer. This definition would still allow technology like CSS to be considered a "protection measure" under the DMCA, and yet prevent DMCA abuses a la Lexmark.

It could also affect the copyright landscape with respect to computer software (executable code, not human-readable source code). Oh well, you can't win them all...