Green v. Department of Justice is an EFF lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention and anti-trafficking provisions on First Amendment grounds. These provisions, located in Section 1201(a) of the DMCA, restrict people’s ability to access, use, or even discuss copyrighted materials that they purchase, by creating legal teeth for the DRM software that restricts access.

One plaintiff in Green v. DOJ is Dr. Matthew Green, a cryptographer and computer security researcher at John Hopkins University. His work on communications systems, financial transaction devices, and medical hardware is vitally important to the integrity and safety of our common infrastructure, but is limited by the legal cloud that hangs over his work as a result of Section 1201.

EFF also represents Dr. bunnie Huang, a prominent computer scientist and inventor who has developed technology to allow the manipulation of digital video streams, and his company Alphamax LLC. Despite the myriad legal fair uses of such technology, using it or offering it for sale could run afoul of Section 1201.

EFF filed Green v. DOJ in July of 2016.