#anticircumvention — Public Fediverse posts

As @pluralistic's has pointed out over and over, there is no longer even the pretense of a reason to keep enforcing the DMCA's enshittogenic "anti-circumvention" rules. Imposed on the world by US corporate interests through "trade agreements" they are now openly breaking. We must convince our lawmakers to decriminalise adversarial interoperability, and regulate in support of the Right to Repair, vendor-neutral technical standards, etc.

#DMCA #AntiCircumvention #RightToRepair #OpenStandards

Copyright Kills Competition

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.techdirt.com/2026/02/13/copyright-kills-competition/

"What if there was a way for a business to transform any conduct it disliked into a felony, harnessing the power of the state to threaten anyone who acted in a way that displeased the company with a long prison sentence and six-figure fines?

Surprise! That actually exists! It's called Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the "#anticircumvention" clause, which establishes five-year sentences and $500k fines for anyone who bypasses an "effective access control" for a copyrighted work."

Let Cory (@pluralistic) explain it. He's good at explaining #enshittification, or as the rest of us call it, the 21st goddamn century.

As an aside, there should be a branch of the Judicial tree that is staffed by people who understand technology and the implications therein. (Just sayin, as someone who had thousands of pages of material stolen "fairly" for LLM.) These courts don't understand what they're ruling on.

https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/07/aimsters-revenge/#effective-means-of-access-control

#DMCA #copyright

Pluralistic: End of the line for video essays (07 Feb 2026)

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/07/aimsters-revenge/

@jackyan
> I donʼt know how to make it but Iʼd be happy to promote it!

Plenty of people in Aotearoa could make it, but first we need to decriminalise it. With a Right to Repair bill that protects technological circumvention - for otherwise legal purposes - as a basic right in a democratic society.

I mean, computer scientists being allowed to publish and speak about circumvention is part of basic academic freedom, which is violated by current anti-circumvention laws.

#AntiCircumvention

Recht guter Beitrag:

"Zeitfragen. Feature: Im Netz der USA - Europas schwieriger Weg aus der digitalen Abhängigkeit"

Episode webpage: https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/im-netz-der-usa-europas-schwieriger-weg-aus-der-digitalen-abhaengigkeit-100.html

Media file: https://podcast-mp3.dradio.de/podcast/2026/01/20/im_netz_der_usa_europas_schwieriger_weg_aus_der_digitalen_drk_20260120_1930_49929435.mp3

siehe dazu auch den Talk von @pluralistic am ccc25:

"Podcast – Cory Doctorow's craphound.com: The Post-American Internet (39C3, Hamburg, Dec 28)"

Episode webpage: https://craphound.com/news/2026/01/01/the-post-american-internet-39c3-hamburg-dec-28/

Media file: https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_507/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_507_The_Post-American_Internet.mp3

#digitalsovereignty #opensource #PublicMoneyPublicCode #SchleswigHolstein #39c3 #righttofix #anticircumvention #trump #tarifs #eff

@jnsmd

Now that the Orange One is threatening new tariffs until Greenland is sold out it is high time to make @pluralistic idea of repealing anti-circumvention laws such as The European Copyright and Information Society Directive. It would be a powerful and creative way to strike back at US imperialist expansionism.

#EU, #Greenland, #anticircumvention

Pluralistic: The world needs an Ireland for disenshittification (17 Jan 2026)

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/17/erin-lets-go/

Excellent argument from @pluralistic.
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition

"Thanks to Trump's incontinent belligerence, we are on the cusp of a 'Post-American Internet,' a new digital nervous system for the 21st century. An internet that we can build without worrying about America's demands and priorities…The US trade representative has forced every one of its trading partners to adopt #anticircumvention law, to facilitate the extraction of their own people's data and money by American firms…But there's a…response… that's just sitting there, begging to be tried: what about repealing anticircumvention law?"

#Copyright #DRM #RightToRepair #TPM #USLaw #USPol #USPolitics #USTR

@pluralistic re: your #39c3 talk (which was excellent, as always), does China also have anti-circumvention laws? It seems to me Chinese companies would be in the best position to follow your prescription and start selling 3rd party jailbreak tools. If they don’t have anti-circumvention laws, what is preventing them from selling these jailbreak tools to everyone else in the world?

#EFF #AntiCircumvention #Jailbreak #Piracy #DMCA

Pluralistic: The Post-American Internet (01 Jan 2026)

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/

RE: https://mastodon.social/@_elena/115802007577550828

➡️ https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification-resistant-internet#t=720 by @pluralistic (@eff)

Seen via @_elena

#FOSS #Internet #AI #Europe #Sovereignty #Security #Copyright #Anticircumvention #Capitalism #Tech #Enshittification #Resistance #Future #Activism #EFF

A clear argument that a great reply to US tariffs isn’t more tariffs, but dismantling the digital locks that help prop up US tech monopolies. Cory Doctorow makes a case that repealing anti-circumvention laws could shift hundreds of billions from corporate rents back to consumers.

https://www.wired.com/story/us-trade-dominance-will-begin-to-crack/ #Tariffs #Trade #Technology #Anticircumvention #TradeWar

Google Built Its Empire Scraping The Web. Now It’s Suing To Stop Others From Scraping Google

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.techdirt.com/2025/12/24/google-built-its-empire-scraping-the-web-now-its-suing-to-stop-others-from-scraping-google/

Pluralistic: O(N^2) nationalism (26 Nov 2025)

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/26/difficult-multipolarism/

"Any business that relies on EUCD 6 is garbage and should be killed with fire. The global champions of this legal sabotage are all American, but the EU companies that copied their business models are also trash and the EU should be terminating them with extreme prejudice."

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/15/freedom-of-movement/#data-dieselgate

#AntiCircumvention #Apple #Microsoft #Oracle #Google

Reddit’s ‘AI Scraping’ Lawsuit Is An Attack On The Open Internet

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.techdirt.com/2025/10/24/reddits-ai-scraping-lawsuit-is-an-attack-on-the-open-internet/

"So why did America's trading partners agree to anticircumvention law? Well, that was down to the tender ministrations of the US trade rep. Countries that didn't pass anticircumvention were threatened with US tariffs.

I used to occasionally guest-lecture at an international relations grad program at the Central European University in Budapest, and one summer, I had a student who had served as the information minister to a Central American country while the US was negotiating the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). This student described getting a phone call from their country's chief negotiator who said, "I know you told me not to budge on anticircumvention, but the USTR tells me that if we don't give them this, they will block our agricultural exports. I'm sorry." Country by country, the world fell into line.

When someone tells you, "You'd better do what I say or I'm going to burn your house down," and then they burn your house down, you'd be an absolute sucker if you kept up your part of the bargain.

I find it absolutely bizarre that the USTR spent decades racing around the world, getting every country on earth to sign up to "America First" policies by threatening them with tariffs, and then Trump actually imposed the tariffs anyway, which has opened up the space for every country to get rid of those America First policies."

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/15/freedom-of-movement/#data-dieselgate

#Eurostack #Anticircumvention #Copyright #USA #Trump #Tariffs #DigitalSovereignty #USTR

Pluralistic: Microsoft, Tear Down That Wall! (15 Oct 2025)

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/15/freedom-of-movement/

Pluralistic: Microsoft, Tear Down That Wall! (15 Oct 2025)

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/15/freedom-of-movement/

@caitp

Tough to forbid it - but Canada could remove the DRM anti-circumvention parts of our copyright law that were added solely to satisfy the USA and its copyright monopolists.

Then Canadian companies could make, and you could buy and use, a teeny little HDCP-stripper box so every TV would work with any device.

#DRM #circumvention #AntiCircumvention #copyright #DMCA

Cory Doctorow's (@pluralistic) blog post for today is a speech he gave last night at the University of Toronto, the annual Ursula Franklin Lecture at Innis College.

It's worth reading:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/26/ursula-franklin/

It connects the dots between anti-circumvention copyright laws like the USA's Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) (and the Canadian copycat legislation) and the enshittification that ensues when Big Tech does ... well, practically anything. There's a specific example he uses that is horrifying. He also shows exactly how Big Tech has escaped what he identifies as the usual four factors for keeping the worst instincts of companies in check.

I agree with him that we should annul the anti-circumvention law on the books, and would go further in saying that we should explicitly enshrine in law the rights to alter, repair, remove etc. any functionality of products and services that we choose to use. I was one of the original 6,000 Canadians who submitted comments warning against the implementation of these restrictions to our government at the time, and my feelings in support of this are stronger than ever.

Give it a read.

Attached image: I think this is probably overdue.

#CoryDoctorow #DMCA #circumvention #AntiCircumvention #DRM #enshittification #e14n #speech #UniversityOfToronto #InnisCollege #DigitalLock #RightToRepair #BigTech #Google #Facebook #Amazon #Microsoft #Canada #tech #software

Cory Doctorow's blog entry today:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/13/wanting-it-badly/

... is well worth reading. All of it is good, but I think the part discussing the evils of DRM is particularly in need of reading by many people. FWIW, I was one of the ~6k people who wrote to the Canadian government to try to get them to not pass an anti-circumvention bill. Unsuccessfully.

#CoryDoctorow #Pluralistic #DRM #Canada #DMCA #RightToRepair #circumvent #circumvention #AntiCircumvention

A rare copyright win for the public – but a small one, only in Canada, and possibly temporary

It is extraordinary that within the copyright world it is accepted dogma that legal protections for this intellectual monopoly should always get stronger – creating a kind of copyright ratchet. One of the manifestations of this belief was the WIPO Copyright Treaty, signed in 1996, which extended copyright in important ways. A key element was the prohibition of any […]

#antiCircumvention #canada #digitalLocks #dmca #DRM #eu #fairDealing #fairUse #informationSocietyDirective #michaelGeist #wipo

https://walledculture.org/a-rare-copyright-win-for-the-public-but-a-small-one-only-in-canada-and-possibly-temporary/

@riley

> As for the "illegal" clones seized on import, I believe these are typically taken under
> patent law and/or trademark law, not DMCA.

Nope; anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA are used to seize imports all the time in the USA.
https://torrentfreak.com/u-s-border-seizures-of-dmca-circumvention-devices-surges-180309/

#circumvent #circumvention #AntiCircumvention #DMCA #copyright #FairUse

This new #EFF (@eff) brief has the important goal of striking down the #DMCA #anticircumvention clause in the name of #FairUse and #FreeSpeech.
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/licensing-scheme-fair-uses-and-other-speech-violates-first-amendment-eff-argues

But the principle that "Pseudo-#IP Rules Shouldn't Block Free Speech" has the nice side effect of highlighting what's wrong with this otherwise unrelated effort:

"Jewish Americans Try to Trademark Pro-Palestinian 'River to the Sea' Slogan"
https://www.newsweek.com/jewish-lawyer-wants-control-pro-palestinian-river-sea-slogan-1846511

#Copyright #Trademark