Delirium wrote:
Excessive avoidance of activities that are not likely
to result in legal
troubles, but which some people irrationally fear might, is pretty much
the definition of "chilling effects" style paranoia.
Seriously, do you think *mailing list archives*, and
non-search-engine-indexed ones at that, are actually illegal? It's not
even clear that such archives legally constitute publication, and
certainly they are far less high profile than many other sources that
have *not* been held legally accountable in any way, such as Google's
own archives, or Wired's explicit publication.
The DMCA does not prohibit publication, it prohibits "trafficking". The
MPAA vs Corely case held that publication on a website constitutes
trafficking, and this was upheld at appeal. The Act specifies damages of
$200-$2500 per "act of circumvention, device, product, component, offer,
or performance of service". Presumably every time someone downloads the
number from the mailing list archive, and every time we send it to someone
by email, this constitues trafficking of such a device.
WikiEN-L has 878 members, so sending the key to the list would create a
liability of between $175,600 and $2.2M, plus archive downloads and what not.
-- Tim Starling