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 insisting, as Reimerdes does, that users must remain ignorant of the capabilities of the electronic products they have purchased.

Nevertheless, despite its normative appeal, Lexmark ultimately articulates an interpretation of the DMCA that is not readily squared with the statutory text. The court’s stated assumption that any purchaser of a product containing unencrypted software code is necessarily allowed to extract that code from the product and make copies surely has the general rule backwards. Although the court’s analysis would be correct as to uncopyrighted code (or, what is the same thing, the uncopyrightable functional characteristics of code that is nominally subject to copyright ), purchasers enjoy no general right to copy and distribute unencrypted copyrighted works. Audio compact discs (“CDs”), for example, ordinarily omit any form of encryption to protect the musical works recorded thereon, but no one (and certainly not the Lexmark court) believes that purchasers are generally immune from liability if they copy and distribute the unencrypted content of a music CD. Although it is true (indeed, it is tautological) that a plaintiff cannot prevail under the DMCA where there is no technological measure protecting the work in question (and therefore nothing to “circumvent”),