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On Lawmeme about the latest in the Chamberlain v. Skylink case (pdf): Judge Asserts Pseudo Distinction to Preserve DMCA. This is the case where Skylink made a third party garage door opening transmitter (you know, the little dark gray plastic thingy with a button that you keep in your car) that worked with Chamberlain's garage door opener (GDO, and it's the mechanism in your garage that actually moves the door open), after which Chamberlain asserted this violated the DMCA. Chamberlain uses a rolling code mechanism (meant to deter thieves) to make their GDO work with their own garage door-opening transmitter. Skylink makes many different transmitters that work with several manufacturers' GDOs. In this case Chamberlain said that Skylink's accessing of the rolling code was in violation of the DMCA anticircumvention provisions.
The problem for the judge was distinguishing the Reimerdes DMCA case from the present facts. In Reimerdes, the decision essentially outlawed all unauthorized devices which decrypted CSS. Under Reimerdes, consumers have no right to access a DVD they purchased unless they use a licensed player. With regard to GDOs, however, the court found a couple of major distinctions. For example, in Reimerdes, the court here claims, the creators of the DVD licensed the decryption software to the manufacturers of players. Thus there were authorized circumventions and non-authorized circumventions. First, the court has the facts wrong. The MPAA and its constituent studios have no authority to license CSS, that authority belongs to the DVDCCA. The licensing involved in CSS is quite complex, and needs to be dealt with more carefully with regard to the legal reasoning. Indeed, if the copyright holders were in fact the sole licensees of CSS, that would raise interesting antitrust concerns. Luckily for the studios, they do not license CSS. Second, if a use is licensed, it is not circumvention. Circumvention implies that the use is unauthorized. Thus, the distinction fails. However, even if the distinction were valid, the problem for Chamberlain becomes that they did not license the technology to another company. If Chamberlain had licensed the technology to one other company, then the argument could be made that there are "authorized" and "unauthorized" circumventions. How the DMCA can be interpreted in this way, I don't understand.
Read the rest of his assessment of the case and the DMCA. It's well done.
Greplaw also interviewed him yesterday: Ernest Miller on DRM, Privacy and Hemingway and it was slashdotted. Check out Game Jockeys too; it's Ernie's latest venture. Great interview, too!
(Related: Ed Felten looks at Chamberlain, as does Derek Slater.)