Application of DRM

And yet another example of ridiculous application of DRM…curtosy of Laurance Lessig via LWN

Amazon.com is offering an electronic version of the U.S. Constitution aimed at Microsoft’s reader. It’s all nicely equipped with the usual digital rights management stuff; according to Amazon, permission to print the Constitution has been denied.

…if somebody were to get around the DRM and dump a copy of this electronic book onto their printer, it would be a clear violation of the DMCA. For somebody looking for a day in court, it would be harder to find a more desirable case to defend than being charged with printing the U.S. Constitution. Explaining the problems of U.S. copyright law to otherwise uninterested parties has always been a challenge; given enough products like this one, that task is likely to get easier