Professors, librarians and others have proposed that the U.S. Copyright Office significantly expand its list of when, and by whom, DVDs and other audiovisual materials should be exempted from technological measures that control access to copyrighted works. The list came in a Federal Register notice of proposed rule making that is one early step in a yearlong process that is likely to culminate next fall.
To back up: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, passed in 1998, generally prohibited the circumvention of technologies that control access to copyrighted material — for example, making it difficult to copy music or scenes or snippets from movies. But the law also set up a process by which the Library of Congress’s Copyright Office, every three years, considers exemptions to that prohibition when petitioners can prove that the limitation substantially and adversely affects their ability to make “non-infringing” uses of copyrighted works.
As a general rule, entertainment companies and publishers tend to oppose significant exceptions (or any, in some cases), and the Copyright Office solicits recommendations and comments and conducts a series of hearings before making its decisions. The exemptions last for three years, and do not automatically renew.
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