October 29, 2003

Minor DMCA Exceptions

Regulators at the Library of Congress and the US Copyright Office added four new exceptions to the over-reaching Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Added were allowances to break copyright protections in order to
  • provide read-aloud or handicapped access to ebooks when necessary
  • transfer computer programs or video games from obsolete to current file formats or hardware
  • computer programs that are protected by obsolete or broken hardware dongles
  • lists of sites blocked by commercial Internet filtering software (but not lists for battling spam)
While this is a sign of progress, it's extremely limited. DMCA still prevents people from removing restrictive protections on media that they've already purchased, in order to play the media on a different device, even if the use doesn't actually break standard copyright law.

[via a c|net story, among other places] Posted by johndan at October 29, 2003 05:03 PM | TrackBack