Figuring out how to get your program played on a phone without paying a toll to the phone maker isn’t a copyright violation, but it is a business-model violation. Congress could easily have written section 1201 of the DMCA to say, “Bypassing DRM to violate copyright is illegal,” but it didn’t. It created a new crime—“felony contempt of business model”—which actually supports anticompetitive conduct. By giving Apple’s App Store moat the force of law, the DMCA stops it from being competed away, allowing monopolists to keep collecting money that should be going to makers, not rentiers.
crazy
Figuring out how to get your program played on a phone without paying a toll to the phone maker isn’t a copyright violation, but it is a business-model violation. Congress could easily have written section 1201 of the DMCA to say, “Bypassing DRM to violate copyright is illegal,” but it didn’t. It created a new crime—“felony contempt of business model”—which actually supports anticompetitive conduct. By giving Apple’s App Store moat the force of law, the DMCA stops it from being competed away, allowing monopolists to keep collecting money that should be going to makers, not rentiers.
crazy