Still stifling after all these years

The EFF has released an update of its DMCA report, Unintended Consequences: Five Years under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Excerpt from Section 3 on Free Expression and Scientific Research: "Section 1201 is being used by a number of copyright owners to stifle free speech and legitimate scientific research. The lawsuit against 2600 magazine, threats against Princeton Professor Edward Felten's team of researchers, and prosecution of the Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov have chilled a variety of legitimate activities. Bowing to DMCA liability fears, online service providers and bulletin board operators have begun to censor discussions of copy-protection systems, programmers have removed computer security programs from their websites, and students, scientists and security experts have stopped publishing details of their research on existing security protocols. Foreign scientists are increasingly uneasy about traveling to the United States out of fear of possible DMCA liability, and certain technical conferences have begun to relocate overseas." There follows a depressingly long list of annotated and documented examples.