DMCA Exemption Time 151
Posted
by
kdawson
from the circumvent-with-daring-and-whimsy dept.
from the circumvent-with-daring-and-whimsy dept.
jvillain writes "Contentagenda notes that the Copyright Office is taking submissions for exemptions to the DMCA. They do this every three years. There's a description of the six exemptions made last time to give you some ideas. So fire up the keyboard and let the Copyright Office know what needs to be changed. If you don't get in now, it'll be another three years before you can try again."
Since the Summary Is Poor. . . (Score:5, Informative)
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Paul Sweeting
Paul Sweeting is the editor of ContentAgenda.com and a columnist for Video Business. He has covered the home entertainment industries since 1985 for Billboard, Variety, Publishers Weekly and other leading business publications. He is based in Washington, DC.
It's DMCA exemption time! - October 6, 2008
Get those anti-circumvention exemptions ready kids! It's time for the Copyright Office's triennial review of Section 1201(a)(1) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, in which the Register of Copyrights makes recommendations to the Librarian of Congress about granting temporary exemptions to the ban on circumventing encryption on certain classes of works. The federal register notice is here. Congress added the triennial review to the DMCA as a fail-safe mechanism, in case it turned out that the blanket ban on circumvention was "unduly burdening" fair use of certain types of work. The exemptions are only good for three years, however, and must be reapplied for with each review.
The last rulemaking, in 2006, resulted in six exemptions:
1. Audiovisual works included in the educational library of a college or universityâ€(TM)s film or media studies department, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of making compilations of portions of those works for educational use in the classroom by media studies or film professors.
2. Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and that require the original media or hardware as a condition of access, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of preservation or archival reproduction of published digital works by a library or archive. A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.
3. Computer programs protected by dongles that prevent access due to malfunction or damage and which are obsolete. A dongle shall be considered obsolete if it is no longer manufactured or if a replacement or repair is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.
4. Literary works distributed in ebook format when all existing ebook editions of the work (including digital text editions made available by authorized entities) contain access controls that prevent the enabling either of the bookâ€(TM)s read-aloud function or of screen readers that render the text into a specialized format.
5. Computer programs in the form of firmware that enable wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telephone communication network, when circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of lawfully connecting to a wireless telephone communication network.
6. Sound recordings, and audiovisual works associated with those sound recordings, distributed in compact disc format and protected by technological protection measures that control access to lawfully purchased works and create or exploit security flaws or vulnerabilities that compromise the security of personal computers, when circumvention is accomplished solely for the purpose of good faith testing, investigating, or correcting such security flaws or vulnerabilities.
Written comments recommending exemptions are due in the Copyright Office December 2, 2008. A notice of proposed rulemaking will be issued later in December based on those recommendations, and final comments are due February 2, 2009.
Re:Making math illegal. (Score:5, Informative)
There is no line. If the case goes to court, the judge or jury will make a decision. It's impossible to draw a line in a situation like this. Also it doesn't have to be a device, CSS keys posted on Digg and elsewhere have been slapped with DMCA take-down notices before now - although just because some company issued a take-down notice, that doesn't mean it would stand up in court. Also DeCSS source code has been taken down as well.
In the case of the Caesar cypher, I think the (specific to my media or not) is important, it has to be specific to your media in order to infringe your rights under the DMCA. If you're daft enough to use some media format that is so common that there might actually be ROT13 code out there that already works on it without modification, then you'd probably be thrown out of court.
Re:Since the Summary Is Poor. . . (Score:3, Informative)
This exemption is talking about the right to circumvent copy prevention, not actually the right to copy the media, if I understand it right.
As such you are not breaking the pro DRM clause of the DMCA, but may still be foul of copyright law. Of course, this is where "fair use" becomes relevant.
Re:Making math illegal. (Score:1, Informative)
Except that it is illegal in fascist America.