‘Apple’s DRM tech reverse-engineered’: Same ahead for e-book systems?

Comments:

• John Mark Ockerbloom says:

  October 3, 2006 at 5:17 am

  What provision of the DMCA do you think they’re breaking? If I read the article correctly, they’re not removing or breaking DRM, they’re adding it. I don’t recall anything in the DMCA prohibiting that.

  I think the more likely legal attack from DRM pushers is likely to be via patents (“we have a legal monopoly on the way we lock down our content”) not the DMCA. Offhand, I don’t know if there are any valid Apple patents that apply in this case, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they had filed for some for their DRM system.
• David Rothman says:

  October 3, 2006 at 5:51 am

  John, many thanks for helping us get at the truth here, and I hope that some lawyers will join in the dialog. I, for one, would love for you to be right. It might mean, for example, that OSoft. creator of dotReader, OpenReader’s first implementation, could reverse-engineer Mobipocket’s DRM. But here’s why I’m skeptical. Read the Copyright Office’s following interpretation of 1201(f):

  Reverse engineering (section 1201(f)). This exception permits circumvention, and the development of technological means for such circumvention, by a person who has lawfully obtained a right to use a copy of a computer program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing elements of the program necessary to achieve interoperability with other programs, to the extent that such acts are permitted under copyright law.

  Sounds great—until you pick up on “lawfuly obtained a right.”

  I realize that selling a reversed-engineered technology isn’t the same thing as selling cracking tools to remove protection, but perhaps one might argue that the cracking was needed to understand the encryption for the purpose of REing it.

  Again, I hope we can hear from a lawyer—ideally a very tech-hip one.

  Now, about patents. Yes, that could be another area of attack. Or maybe it would be a two-front war against the supposed infringer.

  Meanwhile I’ll rooting for you to be right!

  Thanks,
  David
• David Berlind says:

  October 6, 2006 at 3:40 pm

  Real does the same thing with its Harmony service and Navio does the same thing in it’s multimedia merchant platform

  Apple originally threatened to sue Real and then never followed through. Navio told me that they watched that case very closely and considered it precedent setting enough that the way for them was legally cleared to do the same thing.
• David Rothman says:

  October 6, 2006 at 5:37 pm

  Hey, great info, David. Let’s hope the same concept would apply to e-books. Thanks very much. David R