If you thought that the DMCA was a law just used to make it illegal to break copy-protections, share copyrighted files, etc. relating to multimedia, think again.  Chamberlain, a company that develops Garage door openers have filed a lawsuit against Skylink for making compatible garage door openers that operate on Chamberlain's garage door products.  The lawsuit has been filed as Skylink has circumvented access controls to the embedded software in Chamberlain's products . 

Since the law was passed by the US Congress in 1998, concerns been raised every year that it is being widely abused by companies to restrict competition, control markets and keep prices high. Many since 1998 have asked: "Just how far can this go?" Well, now we know. The DMCA has finally found a buffer. And it came in a court case at the end of August: Chamberlain Group vs Skylink Technologies. Never heard of them, you say? How could you not know about some of the finest purveyors of automatic garage-door openers? Yes, Chamberlain Group launched a case against its rival Skylink under the DMCA because the company was making compatible garage door openers. So, you buy your garage door opening system from Chamberlain and lose the remote control. Fortunately, a control from Skylink will also open the door. Great, but in order to offer this service, says Chamberlain, Skylink circumvented access controls to a computer program in Chamberlain's opener. Skylink claimed conversely that since the person that uses the control actualy owns the garage and the door opener, they have a lawful right to access the computer program however they want. Yes, this is how bad things have got.

Since the DMCA law was passed by the US Congress back in 1998, companies are finding ways to abuse it in order to fix high prices, restrict competition and 'control' their products. Recently, we seen that Kazaa, a company disliked by the music and video industry have managed to use the DMCA to remove Kazaa-lite from Google.  If you search for 'DMCA' in Google, they have made their number one result an 'Anti-DMCA'! ;) 

I'm sure it will not be long before other non-entertainment companies begin abusing the DMCA also.  Printer companies such as Epson that use 'chip cartridges' look to be next since one must circumvent the cartridges programming/memory to refill them.

Dicussion about our legal rights and the DMCA are on this CD-Freaks forum thread :

Source: The Register