The DMCA is being used to squelch animal rights activists on the web

The DMCA ( Digital Millenium Copyright Act) is now being used to silence non -profits. At the end of this essay there is a link to the story, but first I would like to give a little background on the DMCA and how it's being used agregiously.

There are a variety of ways this law is being wielded by the Federal government and large corporations to stifle free speech and to limit the ability of people to share information and to excercise their fair use rights under the law. One example is the Computer programmer Dmitry Skylarov. Dmitry faces up to 25 years in jail for writing a computer program that allows people to access e-books(Adobe) that they have purchased without having to pay for another copy from the publisher. Adobe is the company which intitiated the charges against Dmitry. In the nation which Skylarov is from (Russia) his act was perfectly legal and in fact encouraged by the laws of Russia. The DMCA has also been used in a lawsuit by the MPAA against the magazine 2600 (http://www.2600.org) to stop them from hyperlinking to a code that allowed people who operate Linux to play DVD's that they purchased on systems using Linux. In addition to the above the DMCA has been used to threaten the computer science Proffesor Felten at Princeton university to prevent him from publishing an academic work relating to a technology that he discovered the weaknesses of. This law affects librarians, computer programmers, people who like to share books, people who like to share music, academics, nonprofits and NGO's, people critical of large corporations, people who buy movies, journalists, and whoever they decide has violated the law they being the SBA (Software Business alliance), The MPAA(motion picture association of america), the Biotech industry, Publishing industry, The RIAA( Recording Industry of America and the US Government.

This type of copyright law or so called intellectual property law is written into the FTAA and is pushed by the WTO via WIPO. These type of laws will might also be discussed in relation to TRIPS in Quatar by the WTO this November. The DMCA and the laws being pushed by the WTO and under so called free trade agreements like the FTAA, essentially make a huge cross section of society criminals for activities that have never been seen as criminal acts in the history of mankind. In short this law makes it illegal to share alot of information and to make backup copies of content that you have purchased in electronic form.

The story concerning animal rights non-profits being squelched is at the link below:
http://www.salon.com/tech/log/2001/08/31/dmca_animals/index.html

Other info:
http://www.anti-dmca.org
http://www.eff.org
http://www.freesklyarov.org/
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/
http://lazowska.cs.washington.edu/felten/
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/08/31/dmca_report/index.html

Or just do a search on this law and you will find a wealth of information. This law is important to ALL activists because the extent of it's power is so great.

There are variety of actions one can take to fight this and other screwed up so-called intellectual propery laws.
1)Learn about this law and what it means to you
2)INFORM your friends,family, coworkers and fellow activists etc.. of this law and it's implications to them.
3) Go to rallies and protests against the law and to free Skylarov these are often listed on the free skylarov site
4)Call and write your congress people.
5)Be creative!