According to this article (which I nabbed from fark.com), two Columbia University students were caught cheating on the GRE. In their sceme, the guy taking the test would transmit images of the questions to an accomplice, who would respond with answers. The cheaters were arrested and charged with "third-degree burglary and unlawful duplication of computer material". What odd charges. I suppose they burgled information... I wonder if this has anything to do with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Chris Taylor wrote a post on this the other day:

In a move the can only be characterized as an egregious afront to the 1st Amendment, the DMCA has been used to silence posts made to a public forum that mentioned prices being charged at various retail outlets [ArsTechnica].

A day after the U.S. Copyright Office began accepting public comments on the "anticircumvention" section of the DMCA, another situation has developed suggesting the entire Act needs reworking. Several retail outlets are wielding DMCA suit threats, forcing FatWallet.com (and other sites) to take down forum postings on Nov. 29th sale information. Even though FatWallet believes the information posted on their site was not protected by the DMCA, the info was taken down as a sensible business decision.

This act has been used over and over by big business to attack the little guy. It's high time that this act was thrown out.

IEEE trade magazines have had a lot to say about the DMCA as well, all of it bad. While the act is supposed to serve the scientific and technical sectors of our society, it doesn't seem like any sci/tech experts actually want anything to do with it. I guess the moral is that lawmakers will always value the opinions of those with knowledge below the opinions of those with assets.