Library of Congress adds DMCA exception for jailbreaking or rooting your phone

Section 1201(a)(1) of the copyright law requires that every three years I am to choose whether there are any classes of works that may be subject to exemptions from the statute\’s prohibition against circumvention of technology that effectively controls access to a copyrighted work. I make that determination at the belief of a rulemaking proceeding conducted by the Register of Copyrights, who makes a recommendation to me. Based on that proceeding and the Register\’s recommendation, I am to ascertain whether the prohibition on circumvention of technological measures that control access to copyrighted works is causing or is prone to cause adverse effects on the facility of users of any particular classes of copyrighted works to make noninfringing uses of those works. The classes of works that I designated inside the previous proceeding expire at the tip of the current proceeding unless proponents of a class prove their case all over again.

Here is the fourth time that I actually have made the sort of determination. Today I actually have designated six classes of works. Persons who circumvent access controls with a view to engage in noninfringing uses of works in these six classes is simply not subject to the statutory prohibition against circumvention.

As I actually have noted at the realization of past proceedings, you will need to understand the purposes of this rulemaking, as stated within the law, and the role I even have in it. This is often not a broad evaluation of the successes or failures of the DMCA. The purpose of the proceeding is to ascertain whether current technologies that control access to copyrighted works are diminishing the power of individuals to take advantage of works in lawful, noninfringing ways. The DMCA would not forbid the act of circumventing copy controls, and therefore this rulemaking proceeding will never be about technologies that control copying. Nor is this rulemaking in regards to the ability to make or distribute services or products used for purposes of circumventing access controls, which might be governed by yet another portion of section 1201.

In this rulemaking, the Register of Copyrights received 19 initial submissions proposing 25 classes of works, lots of them duplicative in material, which the Register organized into 11 groups and published in a notice of proposed rulemaking seeking comments on the proposed classes. Fifty-six comments were submitted. Thirty-seven witnesses appeared throughout the four days of public hearings in Washington and in Palo Alto, California. Transcripts of the hearings, copies of the entire comments, and copies of different information received by the Register had been posted on the Copyright Office\’s website.

The six classes of works are:

(1) Movies on DVDs which are lawfully made and purchased and which might be protected by the Content Scrambling System when circumvention is accomplished solely with a view to accomplish the incorporation of short portions of films into new works for the purpose of criticism or comment, and where the person conducting circumvention believes and has reasonable grounds for believing that circumvention is important to meet the purpose of the use within the following instances:

(i) Educational uses by college and university professors and by college and university film and media studies students;

(ii) Documentary filmmaking;
(iii) Noncommercial videos

(2) Computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the only real purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications, once they had been lawfully obtained, with computer programs on the telephone handset.

(3) Computer programs, within the kind of firmware or software, that enable used wireless telephone handsets to connect with a wireless telecommunications network, when circumvention is initiated by the owner of the copy of the computer program solely so that it will connect with a wireless telecommunications network and access to the network is allowed by the operator of the network.

(4) Video games accessible on personal computers and protected by technological protection measures that control access to lawfully obtained works, when circumvention is accomplished solely for the purpose of fine faith testing for, investigating, or correcting security flaws or vulnerabilities, if:

(i) The ideas derived from the safety testing is used primarily to promote the protection of the owner or operator of a computer, computer system, or computer network; and
(ii) The tips derived from the safety testing is used or maintained in a fashion that doesn’t facilitate copyright infringement or a violation of applicable law.

(5) Computer programs protected by dongles that prevent access as a result of malfunction or damage and which might be obsolete. A dongle will be considered obsolete if that’s not manufactured or if a replacement or repair isn’t any longer reasonably available inside the commercial marketplace; and

(6) 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.

All of these classes of works find their origins in classes that I designated at the belief of the previous rulemaking proceeding, but a few of the classes have changed resulting from differences inside the facts and arguments presented within the current proceeding. To illustrate, within the previous proceeding I designated a class that enable film and media studies professors to have interaction inside the noninfringing activity of constructing compilations of film clips for classroom instruction. Within the current proceeding, the record supported a variety of that class to enable the incorporation of short portions of films into documentary films and noncommercial videos for the purpose of criticism or comment, when the person carrying out circumvention reasonably believes that it’s important to meet that purpose. I consider the Register that the record demonstrates that it truly is sometimes necessary to bypass access controls on DVDs so one can make some of these fair uses of short portions of films.