Tools You Can't Use

Without competition, an industry can stagnate due to high prices, slow product delivery and limited product innovation. Recent lawsuits that invoke the Digital Millennium Copyright Act seek to curb competition and therefore threaten to bring about those conditions. Passed in 1998, the DMCA was written to limit Internet piracy. But a provision of the law—Section 1201—prohibits individuals from circumventing technological measures erected by copyright holders to protect their works. It is this section that corporations are invoking to kill competition.