[CLUE-Talk] copyrighting encrypted works

[Dennis J Perkins]

I find this exerpt very interesting.


At one point, the judge called on Department of Justice attorney John 
Zacharia to answer some questions about the DMCA. The attorney has 
weighed in on the side of the studios in an attempt to defend the 
constitutionality of the DMCA.

Illston asked Zacharia to explain the conundrum of locking up 
copyrighted works behind encryption and then making the breaking of that 
encryption illegal, even after the copyrights on those works expire. The 
judge wondered if it would effectively extend copyrights to keep such 
works out of the public domain.

Zacharia said it would not, because the copyright had expired.

"But it's encrypted. If it doesn't stop being encrypted, it's still 
encrypted," Illston said, adding that such protected works still 
couldn't be legally copied.