A Digital 'March on Washington'

Prof. Randy Picker has a thought-provoking post on the University of Chicago Law Faculty blog about the diggstorm of May 1st, 2007. He analyzes the disregard for the law which was evident as digg users, and eventually digg itself, willfully publicized a rather clear violation of the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause.

That takes us to the question of civil disobedience. My operating assumption is that there are some laws that individuals will appropriately conclude that they should disobey, laws that while enacted pursuant to the extant applicable procedures, are nonetheless beyond the scope of what should be law in a well-constituted society. In those circumstances, civil disobedience will be appropriate and we should be grateful to those who are willing to suffer the consequences of disobeying illegitimate law.

I wouldn’t think that not being able to play an encrypted high-definition DVD on your platform of choice would fall into that category. I understand fully that people disagree about whether digital rights management and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act are good copyright policy. I also understand that users can be frustrated by limitations imposed by DRM (I’ve run into those myself). But I think the DMCA (and the DRM that it makes possible) is a long, long way from the sorts of laws for which civil disobedience is an appropriate response. Simply not liking the law is not enough. There must be more, something that recognizes the nature of reasonable disagreement over law, and the range of possible legitimate variations about those laws.

Prof. Picker dances around it, but I think that there should be a deep moral or ethical disagreement with a law to act in civil disobedience.

Tuesday night, I spent more time on digg than I had in months. After staring incredulously at the screen as it filled with innumerable stories involving the now famous string of numbers and letters, I began to digg every one. I was among thousands who, with a single click of the mouse, registered their disapproval with the DMCA. The hexadecimal key was obsolete - new DRM will take its place - but the restriction to knowledge and information it represents is still very much the law.

A law which I feel is deeply unethical and treads an unimaginably thin line of legality. In a world where people can, for the first time, access information on an enormous scale, the DMCA's provisions which prohibit fair use are something which I feel should be overturned as much as I feel segregation should have been outlawed.

Education is terribly important to me. Equality is terribly important. Often the two go hand-in-hand. Ignorance breads discrimination. Diggs users, sitting individually in thousands of homes were clicking for access to information and in support of fair use. They were Marching on Washington in the way my generation does - digitally.