(vi) Another Challenge to the DMCA – The Felten Case.During 2000, the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) offered a cash prize to anyone
who could break its watermark encryption scheme for the protection of digital content. A team
of scientists, led by Prof. Edward Felten of Princeton University, was able to crack the scheme
and desired to publish a paper on how they were able to do it. The RIAA threatened Prof. Felten,
contending that publication of the paper would violate the anti-circumvention provisions of the
DMCA. As a result of the threats, Prof. Felten withdrew publication of his paper from an April
2001 conference. In June 2001, he and seven other researchers, together with the Usenix
Association (a professional organization that had accepted Felten’s paper for a security
symposium to be held during August 2001), filed a lawsuit against the RIAA, seeking a
declaration that publication of their work would not violate the DMCA, and against the Justice
Department to block it from prosecuting the symposium organizers for allowing the paper to be
presented.^1105 On Nov. 28, 2001, a district judge in New Jersey dismissed the lawsuit, apparently
concluding that neither the RIAA nor the Justice Department had imminent plans to seek to stop
Prof. Felten from publishing his findings.^1106 Citing assurances from the government, the RIAA,
and the findings of the district judge, in Feb. of 2002, Prof. Felten and his research team decided
not to appeal the dismissal of their case.^1107
(vii) Pearl Investments, LLC v. Standard I/O, Inc.In this case, Pearl hired Standard to perform software programming services to develop
an automated stock-trading system (ATS). After completion of ATS, an employee of Standard
named Chunn who had helped develop ATS, working on his own time, created software for his
own experimental automated trading system, which he maintained on a server separate from the
server that Pearl’s ATS system was operating on, although Chunn’s server was hosted by the
same service provider as Pearl’s ATS system.^1108 Pearl’s ATS system operated on a virtual
private network (VPN) that contained access restrictions implemented through a special router to
the VPN.^1109 At one point, Pearl requested the service provider to install Linux on its ATS
server. The service provider mistakenly installed Linux on Chunn’s server, which was plugged
into Pearl’s router. Pearl alleged that a “tunnel” (a secure connection) was configured in the
router that provided a connection between Chunn’s server and Pearl’s server, thereby allowing
(^1105) Declan McCullagh, “Code-Breakers Go to Court” (June 6, 2001), available as of Jan. 19, 2002 at
http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,44344,00.html.
(^1106) Robert Lemos, “Court Dismisses Free-Speech Lawsuit” (Nov. 28, 2001), available as of Jan. 19, 2002 at
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-8010671.html.
(^1107) Electronic Frontier Foundation press release, “Security Researchers Drop Scientific Censorship Case” (Feb. 6,
2002), available as of Feb. 10, 2002 at http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/Felten_v_RIAA/20020206_eff_felten_pr.html.
The government stated in documents filed with the court in Nov. 2001 that “scientists attempting to study
access control technologies” are not subject to the DMCA. Id.
(^1108) Pearl Investments, LLC v. Standard I/O, Inc., 257 F. Supp. 2d 326, 339-40 (D. Me. 2003).
(^1109) Id. at 342, 349.