Legal concerns about CAPTCHA

[forum_admin]

The circumvention of CAPTCHAs may violate the anti-circumvention clause of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the United States. In 2007, Ticketmaster sued software maker RMG Technologies for its product which circumvented the ticket seller's CAPTCHAs on the basis that it violates the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA. In October 2007, an injunction was issued stating that Ticketmaster would likely succeed in making its case. In June 2008, Ticketmaster filed for Default Judgment against RMG. The Court granted Ticketmaster the Default and entered an $18.2M judgment in favor of Ticketmaster.

CAPTCHA without audio may also violate the Americans With Disabilities Act, according to the American Council of the Blind.

A CAPTCHA or Captcha is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer. The process usually involves one computer (a server) asking a user to complete a simple test which the computer is able to generate and grade.

The term "CAPTCHA" is a contrived acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart."