Every three years, the Library of Congress solicits public proposals for new (and renewable existing) exemptions from the anti-circumvention provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. On May 1, and May 6-8, the Library of Congress’s Copyright Office will hold its triennial rulemaking session on the anti-circumvention provision of the DMCA, where they will host panel discussions on the 2009 proposed exemptions.
The May 1 hearing will be held in Palo Alto, California, in Room 80 (moot court room) of Stanford Law School, 559 Nathan Abbott Way. The May 6-8 meetings will be held in Washington, DC, and will begin at 10 AM in room 408 of the Madison building of the Library of Congress. (Be sure to get there early, as space is limited.) All hearings are open to the public.
A full schedule of the hearing agendas, as well as panel speakers, can be found here.
From the Library of Congress’s website: “The purpose of this proceeding is to determine whether there are particular classes of works as to which users are, or are likely to be, adversely affected in their ability to make noninfringing uses due to the prohibition on circumvention of access controls. This page contains links to published documents in this proceeding.”
The Copyright Office accepted comments from 6 October through 2 December 2008. You can see the Notice of Inquiry and Notice of Proposed Rulemaking through the Copyright Office’s DMCA rulemaking website here.
25 exemptions are up for discussion, implementation and/or renewal at this year’s meeting. They are:
1. “Literary works” distributed in ebook format, when all existing ebook editions of the work (including digital text editions made available by authorized entities) contain access controls that prevent the enabling either of the book’s read–aloud function or of screen readers that render the text into a specialized format. Proponent: American Foundation for the Blind [Renewal]
2. Subscription based services that offer DRM–protected streaming video where the provider has only made available players for a limited number of platforms, effectively creating an access control that requires a specific operating system version and/or set of hardware to view purchased material. Proponent: Megan Carney
3. Motion pictures protected by anti-access measures, such that access to the motion picture content requires use of a certain platform. Proponent: Mark Rizik
4. Audiovisual works in the following categories:
4A. Commercially produced DVDs used in face–to–face classroom teaching by college and university faculty, regardless of discipline or subject taught, as well as by teachers in K–12 classrooms. Proponent: Gary Handman, Media Resources Center, UC Berkeley
4B. Audiovisual works used by instructors at accredited colleges or universities to create compilations of short portions of motion pictures for use in the course of face–to–face teaching activities. Proponent: Kevin L. Smith, Duke University
4C. Audiovisual works that illustrate and/or relate to contemporary social issues used for the purpose of teaching the process of accessing, analyzing, evaluating, and communicating messages in different forms of media. Proponent: Renee Hobbs
4D. Audiovisual works that illustrate and/or relate to contemporary social issues used for the purpose of studying the process of accessing, analyzing, evaluating and communicating messages in different forms of media, and that are of particular relevance to a specific educational assignment, when such uses are made with the prior approval of the instructor. Proponent: Renee Hobbs
4E. Audiovisual works contained in a college or university library, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of making compilations of portions of those works for educational use in the classroom by media studies or film professors. Proponent: Peter DeCherney, et al, University of Pennsylvania [Renewal]
4F. Audiovisual works contained in a college or university library, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of making compilations of portions of those works for coursework by media studies or film students. Proponent: Peter DeCherney, et al, University of Pennsylvania
4G. Audiovisual works included in a library of a college or university, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of making compilations of portions of those works for educational use in the classroom by professors. Proponent: Library Copyright Alliance and Music Library Association
4H. All audiovisual works and sound recordings ‘used in face–to–face classroom teaching by college and university faculty, regardless of discipline or subject taught’ and regardless of the source of the legally acquired item. Proponent: Gail Fedak
5. Computer programs on wireless telecommunication handsets in the following categories:
5A. Computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute lawfully obtained software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications with computer programs on the telephone handset. Proponents: Fred von Lohmann, Jennifer S. Granick, Electronic Frontier Foundation
5B. Computer programs that operate wireless telecommunications handsets when circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling wireless telephones to connect to a wireless telephone communication network. Proponent: MetroPCS Communications, Inc.
5C. Computer programs in the form of firmware or software that enable mobile communication handsets to connect to a wireless communication network, when circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of lawfully connecting to a wireless communication network. Proponent: Paul Posner, Youghiogheny D/B/A Pocket Communications [Renewal]
5D. Computer programs in the form of firmware that enable wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telephone communication network, when circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of lawfully connecting to a wireless telephone communication network, regardless of commercial motive. Proponent: Jonathan Newman, Wireless Alliance et al.
6. Computer programs protected by dongles that prevent access due to malfunction or damage or hardware or software incompatibilities or require obsolete systems or obsolete hardware as a condition of access. Proponent: Joseph V. Montoro, Jr. [Renewal]
7. Computer programs [for forensic analysis]. Proponent: Glenn Pannenborg
8. Circumstances of good-faith testing, investigating, and correcting security vulnerabilities, in the following categories:
8A. Literary works, sound recordings, and audiovisual works accessible on personal computers and protected by technological protection measures that control access to lawfully obtained works and create or exploit security flaws or vulnerabilities that compromise the security of personal computers, when circumvention is accomplished solely for the purpose of good faith testing, investigating, or correcting such security flaws or vulnerabilities. Proponent: J. Alex Halderman, University of Michigan [Renewal and expansion]
8B. Video games accessible on personal computers and protected by technological protection measures that control access to lawfully obtained works and create or exploit security flaws or vulnerabilities that compromise the security of personal computers, when circumvention is accomplished solely for the purpose of good faith testing, investigating, or correcting such security flaws or vulnerabilities. Proponent: J. Alex Halderman, University of Michigan
9. Digital Television, in the following categories:
9A. “Digital Television/Broadcast Flag” — Audiovisual works delivered by digital television (”DTV”) transmission intended for free, over-the-air reception by anyone, which are marked with a “broadcast flag” indicator that prevents, restricts, or inhibits the ability of recipients to access the work at a time of the recipient’s choosing and subsequent to the time of transmission, or using a machine owned by the recipient but which is not the same machine that originally acquired the transmission. Proponent: Matt Perkins
9B.”ICT” — Audiovisual works embedded in a physical medium (such as Blu-Ray discs) which are marked for “down-conversion” or “down-resolutioning” (such as by the presence of an Image Constraint Token “ICT”) when the work is to be conveyed through any of a playback machine’s existing audio or visual output connectors, and therefore restricts the literal quantity of the embedded work available to the user (measured by visual resolution, temporal resolution, and color fidelity). Proponent: Matt Perkins
10. Sound recordings, audiovisual works, and software distributed commercially online, in the following categories:
10A. Lawfully purchased sound recordings, audiovisual works, and software programs distributed commercially in digital format by online music and media stores and protected by technological measures that depend on the continued availability of authenticating servers, when such authenticating servers cease functioning because the store fails or for other reasons. Proponent: Christopher Soghoian
10B. Lawfully purchased sound recordings, audiovisual works, and software programs distributed commercially in digital format by online music and media stores and protected by technological measures that depend on the continued availability of authenticating servers prior to the failure of [authenticating] servers for technologists and researchers studying and documenting how the authenticating servers that effectuate the technological measures function. Proponent: Christopher Soghoian
11. Audiovisual works released on DVD, in the following categories:
11A. Audiovisual works released on DVD, where circumvention is undertaken solely for the purpose of extracting clips for inclusion in noncommercial videos that do not infringe copyright. Proponents: Fred von Lohmann, Jennifer S. Granick, Electronic Frontier Foundation
11B. Motion pictures and other audiovisual works in the form of Digital Versatile Discs (DVDs) that are not generally available commercially to the public in a DVD form not protected by Content Scramble System technology when a documentary filmmaker, who is a member of an organization of filmmakers, or is enrolled in a film program or film production course at a post–secondary educational institution, is accessing material for use in a specific documentary film for which substantial production has commenced, where the material is in the public domain or will be used in compliance with the doctrine of fair use as defined by federal case law and 17 U.S.C. § 107. Proponents: Kartemquin Educational Films, Inc. and International Documentary Association
Exemptions granted at previous rulemaking sessions include:
2000:
1. Compilations consisting of lists of websites blocked by filtering software applications; and
2. Literary works, including computer programs and databases, protected by access control mechanisms that fail to permit access because of malfunction, damage, or obsoleteness.
2003:
1. Compilations consisting of lists of Internet locations blocked by commercially marketed filtering software applications that are intended to prevent access to domains, websites or portions of websites, but not including lists of Internet locations blocked by software applications that operate exclusively to protect against damage to a computer or computer network or lists of Internet locations blocked by software applications that operate exclusively to prevent receipt of email.
2. Computer programs protected by dongles that prevent access due to malfunction or damage and which are obsolete.
3. Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and which require the original media or hardware as a condition of access. A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.
4. Literary works distributed in ebook format when all existing ebook editions of the work (including digital text editions made available by authorized entities) contain access controls that prevent the enabling of the ebook’s read-aloud function and that prevent the enabling of screen readers to render the text into a specialized format.
(Definitions: (1) “Internet locations” are defined to include domains, uniform resource locators (URLs), numeric IP addresses or any combination thereof. (2) “Obsolete” shall mean “no longer manufactured or reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.” (3) “Specialized format,” “digital text” and “authorized entities” shall have the same meaning as in 17 U.S.C. §121)
2006:
1. Audiovisual works included in the educational library of a college or university’s film or media studies department, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of making compilations of portions of those works for educational use in the classroom by media studies or film professors.
2. Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and that require the original media or hardware as a condition of access, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of preservation or archival reproduction of published digital works by a library or archive. A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.
3. Computer programs protected by dongles that prevent access due to malfunction or damage and which are obsolete. A dongle shall be considered obsolete if it is no longer manufactured or if a replacement or repair is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.
4. Literary works distributed in ebook format when all existing ebook editions of the work (including digital text editions made available by authorized entities) contain access controls that prevent the enabling either of the book’s read-aloud function or of screen readers that render the text into a specialized format.
5. Computer programs in the form of firmware that enable wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telephone communication network, when circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of lawfully connecting to a wireless telephone communication network.
6. Sound recordings, and audiovisual works associated with those sound recordings, distributed in compact disc format and protected by technological protection measures that control access to lawfully purchased works and create or exploit security flaws or vulnerabilities that compromise the security of personal computers, when circumvention is accomplished solely for the purpose of good faith testing, investigating, or correcting such security flaws or vulnerabilities.