Minnow mounts legal challenge to Digital Millennium Copyright Act

Ben Edelman, who investigates the effectiveness of Internet blocking software, is backed by the American Civil Liberties Union in his attempt to block legal attempts by a Seattle firm, N2H2, to stop him cracking their encryption system in the name of research.

Edelman says "N2H2's block site list is protected by technical measures including an encryption system, but I seek to write software that will nonetheless allow me to access, analyze, and report its contents."

However, he adds, "I fear that conducting this work may expose me to liability for violation of the N2H2 License, of the Copyright Act of 1976, and of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, as well as for misappropriation of N2H2's trade secrets.

With the help of the ACLU, Edelman is seeking a declaratory judgement from a federal court that he may conduct his research without fear of liability.

The American Civil Liberties Union brought the case against N2H2 in July and has filed papers with the court seeking to allow Edelman the right to research. It thereby seeks to limit the potential reach of the controversial law.

A ACLU spokesperson was "confident" the case would go ahead, despite N2H2's objections.

N2H2 has said it intends to "assert all of our legal rights against Edelman if he engages in future activity that violates the agreement of our proprietary rights".

The lawsuit seeks to grant Edelman the right to decrypt and publish N2H2's blacklist, and to distribute the decoding utility he uses to crack the encrytion.

Back in July, HP waved a copy of the DMCA at researchers who publicised details of vulnerability in the company's Tru64 Unix operating system.

Edelman has published his version of the case developments so far over here. µ