Twelve years after the passage of the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the law continues to stymie fair use, free speech, scientific research, and legitimate competition.

Twelve years after the passage of the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the law continues to stymie fair use, free speech, scientific research, and legitimate competition.

The first time that the European Commission's vice president talked about the Digital Agenda which was recently published. Neelie Kroes speech was the first time that she talked about the Digital Agenda in public, and she provided quite a bit of interpretation.

EFF's Coders' Rights Project protects programmers and developers engaged in cutting-edge exploration of technology in our world. Security and encryption researchers help build a safer future for all of us using digital technologies, yet too many legitimate researchers face serious legal challenges that prevent or inhibit their work.

Deploying Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology restricts access to content to users who have not been specifically authorized by the content owner. However, these protections sometimes prevent users from using the content in ways they would expect to be entitled, such as playing music on their computers and their portable MP3 players.

"At least 5000 consumers have added their digital signatures to an anti-iPad campaign that's currently petitioning Apple CEO Steve Jobs to remove digital rights management, or DRM, from the device's content..."

The European Commission plans to rewrite ICT industry rules to make sure dominant technologies, like devices with always-on connectivity, do not lock consumers into supporting monopolies and hamper innovation, Neelie Kroes, EU commissioner for the Digital Agenda, told EurActiv in an exclusive interview.

"...Digital rights management (DRM) refers to technologies typically used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, and copyright holders to attempt to control how consumers access and use media and entertainment content. Among other issues, the workshop will address the need to improve disclosures to consumers about DRM limitations.

Reading Prof. Felten's post on "DRM in Retreat" earlier this year might have led one to believe that DRM was getting ready to take a long walk off a short pier wearing concrete shoes. However, the DRM town hall meeting hosted by the Federal Trade Commission this week in Seattle quickly disabused all in attendance of such a notion.