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Comment by saurik | Hacker News Reader

This is about Section 1201, one of the most interesting parts of the DMCA, which is about banning circumvention devices. What is confusing me is that I am under the impression that the DMCA "takedown" process (which I know quite little about, to be fair) was unrelated to the anti-trafficking provisions (which I do stare at a lot), so I don't think this is a valid request (even if it were a valid lawsuit... though I frankly doubt that either as I don't think an "access token" can be considered an "effective TPM").

(I am not a lawyer, but I spend an unreasonable amount of my time staring at Section 1201 issues; if anyone needs legal advice they should contact a lawyer: nothing I say should possibly be construed as legal advice.)

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From what I gathered: The author was banned from service on Instagram, he or she kept getting banned/denied new accounts because they flagged the device's UUID... So the author then made the API to mask/modify the device UUID and try to regain access to the platform (presumably signing up elsewhere, then using that token through this API to maintain access on their phone).

The author admitted to this in the readme of the repo.

Sounds 100% like the API was designed to try and bypass access control mechanisms...

Not sure if that falls under the legal definition or not.

> Sounds 100% like the API was designed to try and bypass access control mechanisms...

Sure, but your parent's point is that this doesn't appear to be grounds for a takedown. Takedowns are for infringing content, which this isn't.

yeah this sounds more like it would be a T&C clause

According to the 2nd sentence on Wikipedia, which describes DCMA:

> [DCMA] criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works (commonly known as digital rights management or DRM). It also criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself.

While I initially thought (like many others on here) that DCMA was to keep you from spreading copyright content or passing it off as your own, the true purpose of DCMA is actually to criminalize the act of circumventing DRM. Access control on a social network I guess is considered a type of DRM for the content within the network (which, lest we not forget, is wholly owned by Instagram as soon as you post it). It specifically states that circumventing access control is a violation, regardless of whether any copyright was actually infringed upon.

So from my keyboard lawyer perspective, it seems like Instagram is actually within their rights here.

[Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A...)

The point of the parent comment is not that the DMCA doesn't cover anti-circumvention, but rather than the DMCA contains many parts, and only the copyright content part has a safe Harbor and takedown notice provision.

The claim you're arguing against isn't that the DMCA doesn't cover this. The claim is that the DMCA takedown process doesn't apply to all infringements of the DMCA, only those of copyright wrt safe harbor.

They don't own the copyright to what you post, you grant them a perpetual license to distribute it.

Problem is, why now. These kind of violations are not new. Too little too late

Could one make the case that this client library enabled interoperability, since it allows one to use Instagram services on a previously unsupported device (e.g. a computer)?

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