What if there was a way for a business to transform any conduct it disliked into a felony, harnessing the power of the state to threaten anyone who acted in a way that displeased the company with a long prison sentence and six-figure fines?
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/07/aimsters-revenge/#effective-means-of-access-control
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@pluralistic Damn, you're such a great writer. Every time you post, I get dragged into reading about a boring topic because you make it so compelling. Thanks for doing this work.
@pluralistic C'est déjà le cas depuis bien longtemps.
@pluralistic As you have said, in this trumpistan era, it's time that some places - eu, here canada - stopped supporting dmca.
Surprise! That actually exists! It's called Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the "anticircumvention" clause, which establishes five-year sentences and $500k fines for anyone who bypasses an "effective access control" for a copyrighted work.
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Let's unpack that: every digital product has a "copyrighted work" at its core, because software is copyrighted. Digital systems are intrinsically very flexible: just overwrite, augment, or delete part of the software that powers the device or product, and you change how the product works.
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You can alter your browser to block ads; or alter your Android phone to run a privacy-respecting OS like Graphene; or alter your printer to accept generic ink, rather than checking each cartridge to confirm that it's the original manufacturer's product.
However, if the device is designed to prevent this - if it has an "access control" that restricts your ability to change the software - then DMCA 1201 makes those modifications into crimes.
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The act of providing someone with a tool to change how their own property works ("trafficking in circumvention devices") is a felony.
But there's a tiny saving grace here: for DMCA 1201 to kick in, the "access control" must be "effective." What's "effective?" There's the rub: no one knows.
The penalties for getting crosswise with DMCA 1201 are so grotendous that very few people have tried to litigate any of its contours.
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"for DMCA 1201 to kick in, the " #accessControl" must be "effective." What's "effective?"
An effective access control is one, that cannot be circumvented. If it can be circumvented, it was not effective in the first place. QED.
@pluralistic @debacle Even if it were the case that your definition of effective was accepted law, one wouldn't know whether one's circumvention research was legal in advance, as if the DRM is effective then the research wouldn't be legal, putting researchers in a legal bind.
Whenever the issue comes up, defendants settle, or fold, or disappear. Despite the fact that DMCA 1201 has been with us for more than a quarter of a century, and despite the fact that the activities it restricts are *so* far-reaching, there's precious little case law clarifying Congress's vague statutory language.
When it comes to "effectiveness" in access controls, the jurisprudence is especially thin.
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As far as I know, there's just one case that addressed the issue, and boy was it a weird one. Back in 2000, a "colorful" guy named Johnny Deep founded a Napster-alike service that piggybacked on the AOL Instant Messenger network. He called his service "Aimster." When AOL threatened him with a trademark suit, he claimed that Aimster was his daughter Amiee's AOL handle, and that the service was named for her.
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