Once again, the DCMA has proven to be one of the biggest threats to free speech in the Digital Age. This article at Slashdot discusses how legal threats made by the RIAA forced a group of academics to cancel the presentation of their paper at a scientific conference. Why? The paper demonstrates how to defeat SDMI watermarking... which the RIAA claims would violate DCMA. Although the Slashdot article states that the paper could be classified as a circumvention device, the RIAA letter is much more vague. Either way, this is a clear example of how the DCMA threatens free speech and fair use as we know it.

From Slashdot:

John Langford sent in the statement read by Dr. Edward Felten, a professor at Princeton University, who decided to skip presenting the paper he co-authored at a scientific conference due to legal threats made by the RIAA. The RIAA put out an open challenge in September 2000, requesting that researchers attack and crack the SDMI watermarking scheme, but demanded that anyone who researched the scheme suppress their results in order to be eligible for a cash prize. "Show off your skills", they said, but they didn't mean it. Felten and colleagues declined the cash prize and its accompanying restrictions, but have been threatened anyway - the RIAA would have brought a lawsuit claiming the research paper is a circumvention device forbidden by the DMCA, much like the DeCSS case.