The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) [official website] filed a complaint [complaint, PDF] today in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia [official website] challenging the “anti-circumvention” and “anti-trafficking” provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) [act, PDF]. The complaint alleges that the act infringes on the rights of citizens of the United States to “tinker” with lawfully purchased machinery or software or to conduct research that could expose security and operation flaws in cars and medical devices.

Copyright issues have become especially prevalent in the digital age, especially as users of technology have become more adept at modifying and customizing their devices. The tech giant Google has been embroiled in copyright litigation for the past several years against multiple companies [JURIST reports]. In 2015, a judge for the US District Court for the Central District of California [offical website] invalidated [opinion] the copyright claim to the lyrics of the song “Happy Birthday.” [JURIST report] Earlier that year, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against [opinion] Universal Music Group [website] in a lawsuit also brought by EFF concerning fair use after Universal demanded YouTube take down the video of a child dancing to Prince’s song “Let’s go crazy.” The case, Lenz v. Universal Music Corp, also revolved around the First Amendment and the DMCA. The previous July, a Belgian court found [JURIST report] that the founders of the file-sharing website Pirate Bay were not guilty of copyright infringement.