DMCA Lawsuit Hits an Online Coupon Hacker

Just when you thought the DMCA was bad, now it gets even worse: John Stottlemire posted instructions on how you could print multiple copies of online coupons at home. You know the ones: You visit a special website where you can print out a coupon instead of waiting for one to be mailed to you or clipping it from a newspaper. Well, the manufacturers of the products those coupons are for didn't take kindly to Stottlemire's tricks. He's going to court. Over coupons.

Stottlemire figured out a way to erase the unique ID assigned to you from the website coupons.com, which let people print all the coupons they wanted. His "hacking" technique? Deleting files and registry keys off his own computer to allow for unlimited printing.

The nascent case brings up a lot of questions about where your rights end and a content owner's rights begin. Stottlemire did nothing to the coupons.com website; he merely tweaked his own PC. It's also been alleged that coupons.com doesn't even have a "click-wrap" agreement preventing such activities. And yet legal experts note that the DMCA is so broad that Stottlemire may indeed be found guilty of "providing technology that is designed for essentially hacking around copyright protection."

Not much of a takeaway here, just a cautionary note about one of our most notorious laws and how it could eventually impact anyone, even a guy trying to save an extra buck on Honeycomb cereal, and possibly even you. Stay tuned for updates on Stottlemire's case.

LINK: Coupon Hacker Faces DMCA Lawsuit