RE: [dvd-discuss]Lexmark Decision

["Richard Hartman" <hartman(at)onetouch.com>]

If a 35 byte _password_ is not copyrightable, and this
"program" is being used essentially as a password, then
they've gotten around the inability to copyright passwords.

IIRC, this mini program is not being _executed_ to gain
access, but the program itself is merely being used as an 
access key ... or have I misunderstood?


-- 
-Richard M. Hartman
hartman@onetouch.com

186,000 mi/sec: not just a good idea, it's the LAW!



> -----Original Message-----
> From: microlenz@earthlink.net [mailto:microlenz@earthlink.net]
> Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2003 6:45 PM
> To: dvd-discuss@eon.law.harvard.edu
> Subject: Re: [dvd-discuss]Lexmark Decision
> 
> 
> Having gone through some of the findings from the Eastern 
> Kentucky court, the 
> case has bizarre features. Lexmark copyrighted  37 and 55 
> byte programs.  
> Lexmark has a copyright on the programs registered with the 
> copyright office. 
> SCC copied the program verbatim. The judge went to great 
> pains to point out 
> that SCC could have done all sorts of things to replicate the 
> functionality and 
> do the authentication sequence but did not. Where I think the 
> judge erred is 
> not in his reasoning but his application of the law. The DMCA 
> is not involved 
> at all. Given the validity of Lexmarks copyright, then this 
> is merely a case of 
> copyright infringement. The authentication is NOT an access 
> control, using the 
> judges own reasoning. So the DMCA really isn't involved. Now 
> I have doubts that 
> Lexmark's code is truly copyrightable. The judge made 
> comments on how Lexmark 
> made created choices regarding algorithms and the like. I 
> don't see that a 
> choice of algorithms is copyrightable nor that it is truly 
> possible to be 
> creative or original in 37 or 55 bytes.
> 
>