#circumvention — Public Fediverse posts

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/

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/

@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

@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