Lexmark Wins Preliminary Injunction In DMCA Case
from the bad-news dept
In yet another example of just how ridiculous the DMCA law is, Lexmark has won an injunction to stop a company from selling inkjet cartridges that work in their printers. While the DMCA was originally meant to protect music from being copied online, it’s now being used for ridiculous cases such as this – where Lexmark is saying it’s illegal for another company to offer a competing inkjet cartridge because it has to “circumvent” their encryption. Of course, based on the wording of the law, this injunction is probably “correct”. The problem is that the law is awful. If Lexmark is successful, and the law isn’t changed, it means that we may be faced with a world where you won’t be allowed to modify anything you own. Ownership is becoming less clear than it used to be. Soon, everything you own could actually be “licensed” to you instead.
