[Infowarrior] - It's DMCA exemption time!

[Richard Forno]

It's DMCA exemption time! - October 6, 2008

http://www.contentagenda.com/blog/1500000150/post/640034464.html

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 university’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 book’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.