become an extension of, and overlap with, trademark law. There was no evidence that Congress
intended such an extreme outcome in enacting the DMCA.^1291
The court then turned to the proper interpretation of the definition of CMI, noting that the
interpretation of that definition was a matter of first impression. Although the court noted that
the definition, read literally, seemed to apply wherever any author had affixed anything that
might refer to his or her name, examination of the legislative history and other extrinsic sources
convinced the court that the statute should be subject to a narrowing interpretation.^1292 Citing an
article by law professor Julie Cohen^1293 and the legislative history of the WIPO Copyright Treaty
that led to enactment of the DMCA to implement it, the court concluded that protected CMI
should be limited to components of automated copyright protection or management systems.
Specifically, WIPO was intended to protect CMI as part of a double protection scheme
for technical measures – to allow the protection of copyrighted works by the application of
technical measures restricting access thereto and protecting copyright rights therein, and to
protect the technical measures themselves against those who would crack them by other
technologies or machines. Thus, the court found that in the framework of the WIPO treaties,
technical measures such as CMI were viewed as components of automated copyright protection
systems.^1294 This same understanding of CMI was embodied in the White Paper of the
Information Infrastructure Task Force released in September of 1995, which presented a draft of
Sections 1201 and 1202, and noted that systems for managing rights in works were being
contemplated in the development of the national information infrastructure to serve the functions
of tracking and monitoring uses of copyrighted works as well as licensing of rights and
indicating attribution, creation and ownership interests. To implement these rights management
functions, the White Paper noted that information would likely be included in an “electronic
envelope” containing a digital version of a work to provide information regarding authorship,
copyright ownership, date of creation or last modification, and terms and conditions of
authorized uses.^1295
From this the court concluded the White Paper demonstrated that the Working Group on
Intellectual Property Rights, in drafting Section 1202, “understood this section to protect the
integrity of automated copyright management systems functioning within a computer network
environment,” and that this interpretation was confirmed by contemporaneous commentary on
(^1291) Id.
(^1292) Id. at 593.
(^1293) Julie E. Cohen, “Copyright and The Jurisprudence of Self-Help,” 13 Berkeley Tech. L.J. 1089 (1998).
(^1294) 409 F. Supp. 2d at 593-95.
(^1295) Id. at 594-95.