Copyright Scenarios

Academic Freedom and Speech - Felten v. RIAA

One of the purposes of the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) was for people around the globe to try and unlock their new watermarking technologies. A professor at Princeton University, Edward Felten, and others at Princeton University successfully unlocked the watermark. Under the First Amendment, Felten and his colleagues wanted to publish the results and to present a paper on their findings at a security conference. However, the SDMI threatened him with a liability lawsuit under the DMCA. Felten then filed his own lawsuit to uphold his First Amendment right to publish his research findings. Felten dropped his suit after the courts implied that scientists studying digital copying technologies would not be subject to the DMCA.

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