Is A Captcha DRM? Craigslist Wins Default Judgment Claiming Yes

from the uh-oh... dept

Last year, we wrote about a troubling set of lawsuits filed by Craigslist that seemed very dangerous, as it was pushing the boundaries on a series of legal concepts, all of which could come back to haunt Craigslist (and others) at a later date. For example, we noted that there was a "weak" DMCA claim that said that the captchas used by Craigslist to get people to prove they were human were actually "technological protection measures," and circumventing them violated the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA. While it's not the same lawsuit (apparently Craigslist had filed even more such lawsuits), Ray Dowd has the details of Craigslist winning a default judgment in a similar lawsuit after the company sued didn't bother to defend itself. This is why the concept of default judgments always concerns me. Now we have a ruling on the books that finds captchas are like DRM, and getting around them even if for perfectly legal purposes (can't read 'em?) may count as violating the DMCA.

Filed Under: captcha, dmca, drm, tpm
Companies: craigslist

The Stealth Anti-Piracy Chip That Is Neither Stealth Nor Anti-Piracy

from the yeah,-nice-try dept

A bunch of folks have been submitting the story of Atari founder and wannabe restaurant mogul Nolan Bushnell claiming that computers are now shipping with a stealth "TPM" chip that will somehow stop software piracy cold. It's not clear why this is getting much buzz, because as others have pointed out it's not new or even noteworthy. It's the same silly scheme that Microsoft, Intel and AMD have been working on for more than half a decade, though it's gone through some name changes in an attempt to make it less controversial. It's been out there for years, and has hardly been used to put any kind of dent in software piracy. But, in the end, the focus on it has really been for security, rather than anti-piracy, and that's likely the way things will stay, as companies are learning (finally) that about the only thing anti-piracy measures do is piss off your legitimate customers. The non-legitimate ones will always find ways to get the software for free anyway, and so the only people it annoys are those who run into some sort of problem when the software accuses them of being pirates, despite having legitimately purchased the software.

Filed Under: antipiracy chip, nolan bushnell, tpm