Digital copyright law on trial

A security researcher asked a federal judge Wednesday to let a challenge to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act continue.

Attorneys for Ben Edelman, who specializes in investigating flaws in blocking software, filed a 26-page document arguing that his work is imperiled by legal threats from N2H2, a filtering company based in Seattle.

N2H2 has asked a Massachusetts judge to dismiss the case, which the American Civil Liberties Union brought in July to let Edelman create and distribute a utility that decrypts N2H2's secret list of forbidden Web sites. The ACLU wants a court to declare that Edelman's research is not barred by the DMCA, by N2H2's shrinkwrap license, trade secret laws or other copyright laws.

"We're confident that the court will deny the defendants' motion to dismiss since they clearly intend to pursue their legal rights against Edelman if he goes forward with his research," said Ann Beeson, an ACLU staff attorney.

By suing on behalf of Edelman, who is a researcher at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center and a first-year law student there, the civil liberties group hopes to prompt the first ruling that would curtail the DMCA's wide reach.

After the DMCA was used to pressure Princeton professor Ed Felten and his colleagues into abandoning 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."

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