As ugly and inelegant as anti-circumvention regulations may be to members of the financial cryptography community, these regulations will likely proliferate in national laws around the world. The reason is simple: an international copyright treaty requires signatory nations to provide "adequate protection" and "effective remedies" to protect copyright owners against circumvention of the technical protection measures they may use to protect their works against piracy. The U.S. DMCA anti-circumvention regulations are far from a minimalist implementation of the treaty. Cryptographers from nations that have not already adopted legislation to implement this treaty provision should become active in the legislative process to ensure that encryption research and computer security testing, among other legitimate activities, are not outlawed or unduly burdened by DMCA-like anti-circumvention regulations. U.S.-based cryptographers may need to become active legislatively as well to help Congress understand why certain changes need to be made to the DMCA, such as clarifying and broadening the encryption research and computer security testing exceptions and adopting a general "or other legitimate purpose" exception to the statute to make the law more balanced and effective.
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