“Edward W. Felten, an associate professor of computer science at
Princeton , is perhaps best known for his role in the Microsoft
antitrust trial. During the trial, where he demonstrated a program
that he said stripped the Internet Explorer browser from the
Windows operating system, he spent hours explaining what he had
done and how he had done it.”
“But the professor has been far less forthcoming about a
more recent hack, and at a conference last week he explained why:
Lawyers have advised him that publicizing the details of his
tinkering could violate a 1998 federal law called the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act.“
“As part of an industry competition to test the security of a
digital music copyright protection system developed by a group of
entertainment and technology companies, Professor Felten was part
of a group that says it successfully disabled the system. But he
said he was reluctant to make public the details of how it was done
because the 1998 law made it a crime to manufacture or “offer to
the public” a way to gain unauthorized access to any
copyright-protected work that has been secured by a technology like
encryption.”
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