Standards body pans copyright law

A major Internet standards group has warned that U.S. copyright laws may chill the development of encryption and security technology. The Internet Society said in a statement that recent efforts to use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to hamper research are "misguided in the extreme."

The group, which runs the Internet Engineering Task Force and other Internet standard-setting bodies, said two recent cases point to potential abuse in the enforcement of the DMCA. The group said it supports a suit brought on behalf of Princeton University professor Edward Felten, which claims the law limits free speech by criminalizing academic discussions of encryption technology. The group also criticized the FBI's arrest of Russian programmer Dimitry Sklyarov, who faces criminal charges under the DMCA for trafficking a product that circumvents anti-copying features of Adobe Systems' eBook Reader.