IF 2002 WASN'T a great year for the people who create and market technology, it was a banner year for the lawyers who represent them.

Courtrooms were packed with people in suits arguing about who has the right to make digital copies of what and whether they should go to jail for doing it. Lobbyists are arguing the same issues before Congress.

Often, these cases don't raise much ruckus outside the tech world, but the decisions that arise from them will have a major impact on the way we use technology to work, play and communicate.

Most of the battles involve the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a 1998 law that set up new rules to protect copyrighted material - such as music, movies and books - in an age where technology makes it easy to make perfect digital copies.

The music and movie industries see the DMCA as their best weapon in an ongoing war against piracy. It's a war the music industry may have already lost, as millions of computer users swap digital copies of CD album tracks over the Internet through file-sharing networks such as Kazaa and Morpheus.

DVD copying isn't so rampant yet, largely because the medium is newer and the files involved are too large to transfer easily. But the movie industry is clearly worried, and doesn't want to broadcast digital versions of its films until the government enacts stricter copy protection rules.

Civil libertarians, librarians, researchers and consumer groups see the DMCA as a one-sided piece of back-door legislation pushed through Congress by industry lobbyists to eliminate the rights that consumers have long held as "fair use" of copyrighted material.

For example, they note that it's legal to tape a movie for your own use, or make a digital copy of an audio CD track to play on your computer or portable music player. Also, it's generally agreed that if you buy a CD, book or DVD, the law gives you the right to sell or give the original to someone else.

On the other hand, all sides (and U.S. copyright law) agree that it's illegal to sell or give a copied music file, movie or book to someone else.

The issue is what happens when the holder of a copyrighted digital work employs an electronic "lock" designed to prevent illegal copying. What if that lock also happens to prevent consumers from exercising "fair use" rights, such as making legitimate backup copies or copies that can be played on more than one device? What if a lock chained a CD to a particular player, so that if you wanted to play the CD at home and in your car, you'd have to buy two albums?

The entertainment industry lobbyists who crafted the DMCA were clever. Instead of trying to limit or eliminate "fair use" rights, which would have been honest and straightforward but decidedly unpopular, they attacked copying technology.

Essentially, the law makes a felon of anyone who tries to circumvent a copy protection scheme, even if he's only doing so to exercise his fair use rights. The law makes it illegal to sell a program or device that can break copy protection schemes. It even forbids you and me from talking about such schemes in public or posting information about them on the Web. We're talking about half-million-dollar fines and up to five years in jail for a first offense.

The question is whether Congress can take away with one hand what it gives with the other - in other words, does Congress have to be intellectually and politically honest with consumers?

Until this month, the entertainment industry pretty much had its way in federal courts, where judges ruled that it was perfectly OK for Congress to be hypocritical.

In the most publicized case, a federal judge in New York ruled that it was illegal for 2600.com, a hacker Web site, to post or even provide links to a program that unscrambles the copy protection used on DVDs. Ironically, the program was originally written to allow users of Linux-based computers to use DVD players because there was no software for their PCs to play them.

But the DMCA finally sprang a leak on Dec. 17, when a jury of ordinary people in San Jose, Calif., got a hold of it. They acquitted a Russian company of all five charges stemming from a program it sold online to circumvent the copy protection on electronic books created with software by Adobe Systems.

The case outraged the programming community because it began when the FBI arrested Dmitry Sklyarov, the young Russian author of the program, as he was attending a conference on encryption where he was a featured speaker. He was held in jail for three weeks until his employer, Elcomsoft, agreed to stand in for him as the defendant at trial and he agreed to testify.

The case raised interesting legal questions that the jury obviously settled by common sense. First, the program was posted on a Russian Web site, in a country where such programs are legal (in fact, some European counties make it illegal to sell programs or data that can't be backed up).

The defense also argued - successfully - that there was no proof that the company willfully designed the software for illegal purposes. In fact, it had a legitimate purpose, even under U.S. law, in making an original document readable on more than one computer.

Although consumer and electronic rights groups applauded the jury's decision, they agreed that its main effect will be to discourage ridiculous DMCA criminal prosecutions - or force prosecutors to shop for dumber jury pools than the one in San Jose - the heart of the Silicon Valley. But the law remains on the books, with civil provisions and penalties that judges seem willing to uphold.

Meanwhile, consumer groups, academics and librarians are once again asking the U.S. Copyright Office to grant exceptions to the DMCA for what they regard as heavy-handed treatment of legitimate copying. The U.S. Copyright Office, which had a major stake in the wording of the original bill, is considered unlikely to agree.

While that's happening, the movie industry and a startup called 321 Studios are suing each other over the company's right to market programs called DVD X Copy and DVD Copy Plus. Ultimately, the Supreme Court will decide the issue.

The most telling comment on the issue may have come from Sklyarov, the Russian programmer whose company was just acquitted. In an interview with CNET News during the trial, he likened software that circumvents copy protection to a gun.

"It has legal applications; it could be used for many legal things, for good things," he said. "A weapon could be used for killing and for protecting myself, but in United States [a] weapon is legal."

Maybe that's because the entertainment industry has better lobbyists than shooting victims.