[DMCA-Activists] Copyright Office DMCA Anti-Circumvention Comments Now Open

[Seth Finkelstein]

[ The Copyright Office's DMCA proposal submission form is now live:
  http://www.copyright.gov/1201/comment_forms/index.html
  http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004089.php
  http://sethf.com/publications/dmca-guide.php ]

Want to Take a Bite Out of the DMCA? Now's the Time

October 26, 2005

As part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), Congress
instructed the U.S. Copyright Office to consider every three years
whether we need exemptions to the DMCA's blanket ban on circumventing
"technological protection measures" (aka Digital Rights Management or
DRM) used to lock up copyrighted works. So if you want to make a
legitimate use of a piece of media, but have been turned back by DRM
and the DMCA, now is your chance to take your case to the Copyright
Office and try to make the world a happier and safer place for
the next three years. As two-time-successful-exemption-requester
Seth Finkelstein says: "The lawsuit you prevent may be your own."

Read on for more info about the process, pitfalls and deadlines.

The Copyright Office is soliciting exemption proposals for the next
three-year period, 2006-2009. Proposals must be submitted to the
Copyright Office by no later than December 1, 2005.

Keep in mind that -- as in the two previous rule-makings -- you'll
have to overcome some obstacles to convince the Copyright Office and
Librarian of Congress to grant you an exemption. These include:

1. The Copyright Office can recommend exemptions only to the DMCA's
ban on acts of circumvention, not to the ban on trafficking in tools
of circumvention. So if you are interested in an exemption that would
allow you to distribute circumvention tools (like DVD back-up
software), you're out of luck.

2. You have to prove that your intended activity is not otherwise an
infringement of copyright law and specifically identify the DRM
technology that is getting in your way.

3. You have to identify a "class" of copyrighted works to which your
exemption would apply. The Copyright Office requires that you do this
by defining a subset of works of authorship. You are not allowed to
frame the class by reference to particular non-infringing uses of
those works, or by attributes of the users. For example, the Copyright
Office has rejected past requests for exemptions for "classroom uses"
of DVDs, while granting exemptions for computer programs protected by
malfunctioning copy-protection dongles.

These are just a few of the sometimes bewildering array of limitations
on the Copyright Office's willingness to entertain exemption
proposals. The best way to understand the requirements is to read: (1)
Seth Finkelstein's excellent account of what it takes to get an
exemption (he's succeeded twice); (2) the official Federal Register
notice for this rule-making; (3) the October 2003 report of the
Copyright Office summarizing its decisions for the last rule-making;
and (4) the final determination of the Librarian of Congress, which
sets out the four exemptions granted in the October 2003 rule-making.

If, after reviewing these, you think you might have something that
qualifies, EFF would like to hear from you. Please email exemption
class proposals to dmca2006-proposals AT eff DOT org by
November 24, 2005.

Posted by Gwen Hinze at 02:36 PM | Permalink | Technorati

-- 
Seth Finkelstein  Consulting Programmer  address@hidden  http://sethf.com
Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/
Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php