Eat it, DMCA

[greatbear]

The US Copyright Office has made some "adjustments" to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, that heinous piece of ill-conceived legislature that favors increasing the bottom-line of the big corporate interests that had too much of a hand in helping write the law, against the the end users of various content. The Library of Congress, which oversees the Copyright Office, reviews and authorizes exemptions every three years to ensure that the law does not prevent certain non-infringing use of copyright-protected material.


This has the potential to be huge. And you better believe that those aforementioned big corporate interests are going to fight it tooth and nail. Among other things, the revisions allow end users to:

• "Jailbreak" their smartphones to allow code and apps obtained from any legal source (third party apps in iPhone, for example, not obtained through the iTunes store, for example),



• Let researchers, educators and the like to circumvent the copy controls on digital media such as DVDs to include fair-use short clips of content for educational and other uses,



• Allows opening up digital media for alternative delivery means, i.e., allows another wise locked-in e-book title to me used by services and applications that allow reading by visually impaired people, or to allow text-to-speech on otherwise read-only titles,



• Allows people to break the usage and copy controls placed on software that use a dongle or other means to restrict copying and allows operation only on the dongle-equipped computer if the software is obsolete and the dongle cannot be replaced.

These points have been a sore spot among users of digital content ever since the incorporation of the DCMA, and easing these restrictions go a long way toward allowing the use of content on legally owned devices, without constantly re-paying for the same content or running afoul of laws when trying to use tools and applications otherwise abandoned by their creators. These exemptions should have been in place at the beginning, and hopefully this will lead to an ability to use digital content the same way we've been able to use their respective physical versions.

Finally, some help for the little guys. More info can be found here.

Comments

[eric-mathgeek.livejournal.com]

VERY cool, thank you.

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

Definitely steps forward! I suppose it's too much to wish for a recognition of "abandonware" in law, but that last part is in the ballpark....

Apple's not going to like #1 at all. *BIG grin* And the second item just makes sense.

I bet that third item was in part triggered by publishers locking down books on the Kindle 2 from being usable in text-to-speech. When I first heard of that feature I thought it would be a massive boon to the visually impaired, until the publishers started denying its use.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

I can see The Jobs seething in his narrow black turtleneck now, sending out his teams of lawyers. "Fly away my pretties! Fly away!" =)

[jkusters]

While I'm not a big fan of the DMCA, I'm kind of surprised that it's in the Library of Congress's power to make changes of that nature. Usually this kind of alteration of a law requires judicial oversight. We'll see what happens when content providers spin up their legal teams.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

The Library of Congress oversees the Office of Copyright, the LoC being the main body of knowledge when it comes to information of all kinds. It makes sense for the LoC to get involved, and being an arm of the legislative process will make the recommendations based on their reviews that will be incorporated into the changes in the law. There is judicial oversight as I understand it, this is just the wing of it that handles the review.

[truckerbear.livejournal.com]

I can finally advertise to jailbreak and unlock phones around town! YAY!

[notdefined.livejournal.com]

This is unbelievable, and the funny thing is, once the companies that want to retain a death grip on products that they sell to you, lose that ability, they may actually make higher profits. It is the song that the open systems folks have been singing for years. Now that the powers that be are beginning to think right headed they should get rid of software patents permanently!

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

Indeed good news and I think it's been proven than once you open things up, it's actually in the best interest of ALL, including the company that makes it as it encourages research and innovation.

I hope they can enforce these new rules and gradually add more expansion of this kind of rethinking and the unexpected consequence may be some old school formats may make more of a comeback and live hand in hand with newer digital downloads.

As the old saying goes, time will tell how this all will play out.

[budmassey.livejournal.com]

This probably comes from having been Associate General Counsel at CompuServe back in my lawyer days, but I am always troubled by the animosity Geekdom has for intellectual property rights. It's almost as if most people feel entitled, after forking over a couple hundred bucks for a device or piece of software, to make whatever use they deem appropriate of the technologies it embodies.

Having also worked for Microsoft, I know that they spend $5-10 BILLION dollars a year on R&D, and I don't think that type of expenditure is uncommon in technology. So those devices and programs represent vast investments that are worthy of protection and the use, distribution and modification of which is quite appropriately restricted.

In many cases, these restrictions have to do with cross-licensing agreements which, despite being troublesome, are at least in part responsible for that little piece of technological joy being in your hands. And if companies make money from these restrictions, I suppose there must be some incentive for them to have sunk billions of dollars in development.

I know this is an unpopular opinion, and one which I only defend intellectually, not in practice. But it's difficult intellectually to support a "just fork over the technology and nobody gets hurt" mentality in light of the Herculean efforts behind the technology we all take so for granted.

/rant