“Cyberrights advocates, open-source evangelists and even
librarians met at Stanford Law School on Thursday in an attempt to
limit the effectiveness of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of
1998 — a piece of legislation that gives music producers,
Hollywood studios and software companies unprecedented powers over
the use of copyrighted works.”
“American copyright law is supposed to encourage creativity,
but what we are seeing — 200 years later — is a situation where
the law discourages the creative process,” Siva Vaidhyanathan,
a faculty fellow in the School of Culture and Communications at New
York University, said at a press conference before a meeting whose
outcome could handcuff the law.”
“…Battles on many fronts Such legal battles cropping up over
DVD movies — and how consumers are allowed to access them — show
only one facet of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Among the
battles:”
“Microsoft vs. Slashdot: Driven by popular outcry, Microsoft
opened its own proprietary specification, based on the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s secure authentication
protocol, called Kerberos. The standard allows client computers on
the Web to securely contact a server using public encryption.
However, Microsoft’s version adds a few twists aimed at letting
Windows clients better connect to Windows servers.”