Is A Captcha DRM? Craigslist Wins Default Judgment Claiming Yes
from the uh-oh... dept
Last year, we wrote about a troubling set of lawsuits filed by Craigslist that seemed very dangerous, as it was pushing the boundaries on a series of legal concepts, all of which could come back to haunt Craigslist (and others) at a later date. For example, we noted that there was a “weak” DMCA claim that said that the captchas used by Craigslist to get people to prove they were human were actually “technological protection measures,” and circumventing them violated the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA. While it’s not the same lawsuit (apparently Craigslist had filed even more such lawsuits), Ray Dowd has the details of Craigslist winning a default judgment in a similar lawsuit after the company sued didn’t bother to defend itself. This is why the concept of default judgments always concerns me. Now we have a ruling on the books that finds captchas are like DRM, and getting around them even if for perfectly legal purposes (can’t read ’em?) may count as violating the DMCA.
Filed Under: captcha, dmca, drm, tpm
Companies: craigslist
