Green v. Department of Justice
Green v. Department of Justice is a pending lawsuit at the United States District Court for the District of Columbia filed to test the constitutionality of the anti-circumvention provisions enacted in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The lawsuit argues that, as passed, the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA prevent legitimate speech under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Background The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was passed in 1998 primarily to ratify two copyright treaties set forth by the World Intellectual Property Organization in 1996 to adapt copyrights for new digital technology. To satisfy requests from numerous different interest groups, Congress recognized that they would have to extend copyright protections to include provisions making it illegal to make or distribute software and hardware that could circumvent digital copyright protections placed on works by their publishers, such as decryption of encrypted works. To balance free speech allowances under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and fair use, the DMCA instructs the Library of Congress to issue narrow exemptions to the anti-circumvention provisions every three years based on public input and review. Since its passage, the DMCA has been criticized as having chilling effects on free