Intellectual Property
No, I do not believe that the anti-circumvention provision should be repealed.
The reasons for it are that the anti-circumvention provision was enacted since copyrighted intellectual rights in digital form became vulnerable to unauthorized copying and distribution (Berners-Lee and Hendler, 2001). Therefore, the provision seeks that as technology advances, copyright owners will have freedom to adapt their circumvention protection measures accordingly. Although the anti-circumvention provision is general in nature (Usher, 2001), it may still be necessary for preventing the unauthorized use of the intellectual property and its importance becomes even greater for the future as technology is advancing a faster rate than anticipation. The copyright laws are likely to become outdated in this situation (McKenna, 2002).
Because descrambling a scrambled work and decrypting an encrypted work are not the easiest means, since they would require sophisticated means to understand the security means such as passwords and encryption.
The effective measures that the owners of the intellectual property take are in their best interest so that the fake unauthorized copy of the work becomes unusable unless the person has specifically been authorized to copy and distribute the work (Litman, 2001).
In conclusion, I believe that the anti-circumvention provision is important since it makes sense to prevent unauthorized uses of the intellectual works of the owner who have put so much time and efforts in producing the work.
If a person had a legitimate fair use reason for accessing a work, then nothing in the provision would prevent him or her from doing so.
This provision is also important since it offers the motion picture; music companies; film studios; and publishing industries
References
Berners-Lee, T. And Hendler, J. (2001). Publishing on the Semantic Web. Nature, 410(4): 1023-1024.
Litman, J. (2001). Digital Copyright. New York: Prometheus Books.
McKenna, B. (2002).Distribution Dollars Drive Ingenta's Growth. Information Today, 18(7):544-545.
Usher, N. (2001). Scientists Demand Free Journal Access.Harvard Crimson, April 23: 1-3.
