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Digital Restrictions (DRM) and New DMCA Exemption Requests Granted

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Security
Legal
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  • The new DRM-breaking exemptions just dropped [sic]

    That means that, every three years, these same volunteers and staffers will have to use their precious time to fight for this commonsense exemption. More importantly, it means they won't be able to use that time to produce cogent, evidence-based cases for more exemptions to benefit people with disabilities, including print-disabled people who aren't blind. Ebook DRM isn't just a problem for visual impairments – people with dyslexia, people who are paralyzed or missing limbs or have coordination and muscular impairments can call struggle with the arbitrary limitations of DRM.

    The triennial exemption hearings are frustrating for all concerned. Many Library of Congress/Copyright Office staffers (even lawyers!) have privately expressed their outrage over the statutory limitations of the triennials to me. Congress should fix this idiotic, symbolic kabuki and replace it with a better system.

    They could start by issuing a blanket exemption for all circumvention that doesn't result in a copyright infringement, and for all the tools needed to effect those circumventions. If you buy a gadget, you should be able to decide how it works, and you should be able to ask other people to help you make it do what you want. You bought it, it's yours. Period.

  • US Copyright Office Expands Jailbreaking Exemption to Roku and Apple TV

    The US Copyright Office has published a list of new exemptions to the DMCA's anti-circumvention rules. Several new freedoms were granted this round, including broader right to repair permissions. The right to jailbreak also expanded to include streaming TV devices such as Roku and Apple TV boxes, despite Hollywood fears that this will boost piracy.

  • Software Freedom Conservancy's DMCA Exemption Requests Granted for Alternate Router Firmware, Copyleft Compliance Investigation and More

    Software Freedom Conservancy is proud to announce that its efforts to stand up for the rights of FOSS developers have been successful and that it has been granted almost all of the exemptions that it requested in the Librarian of Congress' recent rule making, according to the final rule Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for Access Control Technologies, which was published today. Effective today, the Librarian of Congress ("LoC") granted DMCA exemptions for installing alternate firmwares on routers and for investigating copyleft compliance, and the exemption that Software Freedom Conservancy previously applied for and received on Smart TVs was also expanded. While our formal request to extend the security research exemption to include privacy research was not granted, the Register clarified that privacy research is indeed included in security research. Our executive director, Karen Sandler, also participated as an individual in a request to expand the existing exemption for medical devices which was also successful.

  • Software Freedom Conservancy's DMCA Exemption Requests Granted

    Software Freedom Conservancy has had several exemptions granted that it requested to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by the US Library of Congress for activities of interest to free-software developers...

DMCA Exceptions To Allow Router Firmware Replacement

  • DMCA Exceptions To Allow Router Firmware Replacement

    Human rights organizations Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have make amendments in the “Law on Copyright in the Digital Age” (DMCA, Digital Millennium Copyright Act ), adding firmware to the router in the list of exceptions, which are not subject to restrictions DMCA.

    Every three years, a special committee convenes at the US Library of Congress, which, during a public hearing, decides to revise the list of exemptions describing situations to which the DMCA law cannot apply. This list is formed to protect against possible abuse and unreasonable restrictions that can be promoted under the guise of the DMCA, without being the object of copyright infringement.

New DMCA Exemptions Guarantee a De Facto Right to Repair

We Just Got the Right to Repair

Activists (including the FSF) helped secure a new round of DMCA

  • Activists (including the FSF) helped secure a new round of DMCA anticircumvention exemptions

    We have some good news to share. The FSF was one of several activist organizations pushing for exemptions to the anticircumvention rules under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that make breaking Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) illegal, even for ethical and legitimate purposes. We helped bring public awareness to a process that is too often only a conversation between lawyers and bureaucrats. As of late last week, there are now multiple new exemptions that will help ease some of the acute abuse DRM inflicts on users. However, the main lesson to be learned here is that we should and must keep pushing. Individual, specific exemptions are not enough. The entire anticircumvention law needs to be repealed. We want to thank the 230 individuals who co-signed their names to our comments supporting exemptions across the board. We should take this as a sign that even though it can be difficult, anti-DRM activism yields practical results.

    Section 1201 is one of the most nefarious sections of the DMCA. The provisions contained in 1201 impose legal penalties against anyone trying to circumvent the DRM on their software and devices or, in other words, anyone who tries to control that software or device themselves instead of leaving it up to its corporate overlords. Section 1201 opens up those who try to study, repair, or research restricted devices to potentially serious legal penalties. Something that doesn't help matters is the intentionally complex series of hoops concerned citizens, researchers, and activists around the world are forced to jump through to voice objection to current anticircumvention rules, or to propose new exemptions.

    This bureaucratic nightmare is the only way to lobby for changes in Section 1201, and the fact that it has to be done every three years makes it a recurring one. Nothing abates the added terror of our being granted use anticircumvention exemptions, but being forbidden to share the tools that make this possible. It takes the hard work of hundreds to secure the anticircumvention use exemptions we already have, and even more work to eke out a few more. Yet thanks to the support of citizens, activists, and researchers around the world, the US Copyright Office has approved a few more, while at the same time demonstrating the DMCA's serious flaws.

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