[dvd-discuss] Draft of upcoming article

[Andy Oram <andyo(at)oreilly.com>]

I'm not convinced that tying anti-circumvention laws to
intent will solve the problem (after all, what's the intent
of the DeCSS creators and promoters? Who determines?) But
I'm considering adding the following paragraph to the
article that's at
http://www.oreilly.com/~andyo/professional/ruling_2600.html:

  Some defenders of DeCSS suggest changing copyright law so
  that anti-circumvention is illegal only "for the purpose
  of copyright infringement." This would make the
  anti-circumvention law less of a radical imposition on the
  course of technology. Perhaps it would change an
  unconstitutional law into a constitutional one. But it
  would leave it up to courts to decide what the intent of
  programmer is, something that is hard to determine even
  with DeCSS.

Andy