The Librarian of Congress and the Register of Copyright conducted another thorough review of requested exemptions to the DMCA and issued six new well-reasoned exemptions. ACT believes the exemptions issued demonstrate the flexibility of the DMCA to adequately protect copyright owners, provide incentives for new innovation, and enable consumers and innovators to utilize and enjoy copyrighted works.
The Librarian of Congress concluded the triennial rulemaking process and issued six exemptions to the DMCA’s prohibition on circumvention of technologies that control access to copyrighted works. Six classes of works were determined to be exempt- in other words, copyright users of these works can circumvent access controls of copyrighted works to make non-infringing uses.
The Librarian, upon the recommendation of the Register of Copyrights, has issued exemptions in each rulemaking since the enactment of the DMCA. These exemptions impacted only a small number of copyright users and went relatively unnoticed. However, a new exemption was added to the list yesterday and it had the tech world buzzing.
Owners of smartphones, basically iPhones, may now circumvent or “jailbreak” the access controls to the firmware in order to add and run interoperable third-party applications.
