摘要：Rights management systems and laws designed to protect these systems from circumvention occupy an increasingly central role in increasingly heated discussions about online copyright enforcement. Proponents argue that without these systems and laws, there is no possibility of meaningful copyright enforcement online. Opponents contend that the emerging technical and legal regimes for digital rights management threaten copyright’s traditional balance of rights and limitations and are inconsistent with the preservation and growth of a vibrant public domain. Without disclaiming the views we have previously stated on those matters, 1 we would like to ask some rather different questions. Thus far, the debate about rights management systems has taken them as given — that is, it has taken decisions about their design as variables exogenous to the policy process. We would like to question this assumption. Can rights management systems be designed and implemented in a way that preserves the traditional copyright balance? If so, how might the law encourage this? Should the law do so?
