copyright infringement everywhere?

A story that caught my eye this morning has me wondering just how wide the scope of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) might be. Is the manufacture of replacement toner cartridges a violation of the Act?

Cindy Cohn, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group in San Francisco that's one of the chief critics of section 1201 of the DMCA, said she expected more cases like the one brought by Lexmark.

"We have long said that the DMCA's potential use as an anticompetitive tool has been great," Cohn said. "Now we're seeing it happen."

It is time to sharpen those pencils, and start writing reply comments to the Library of Congress about the DMCA.