[NetBehaviour] Internet Archive Helps Secure Exemption To The Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

marc marc.garrett at furtherfield.org
Fri Dec 1 13:26:25 CET 2006


Internet Archive Helps Secure Exemption To The Digital Millennium 
Copyright Act.

Thanks to the hard work of two great law school students of Peter Jaszi 
of American University, Jieun Kim and Doug Agopsowicz, the Internet 
Archive and other libraries may continue to preserve software and video 
game titles without fear of going to jail. This is a happy moment, but 
on the other hand this exception is so limited it leaves the overall 
draconian nature of the DMCA in effect. A total of more than $50,000 of 
pro-bono lawyer time has been spent to just affect this exemption and 
its continuation. We hope that Congress, and other governments, will 
pass more balanced copyright laws to allow at least libraries, archives, 
research and scholarship to flourish without the current dark clouds of 
litigation.

More formally, Internet Archive has successfully advocated for an 
exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”). The DMCA 
prohibits circumvention of technological measures employed by or on 
behalf of copyright owners to protect their works (“access controls”). 
Specifically, 17 U.S.C. §1201(a)(1)(A) provides, in part, that “No 
person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively 
controls access to a work protected under this title.” In order to 
ensure that the public will have continued ability to engage in 
noninfringing uses of copyrighted works, such as fair use, subparagraph 
(B) limits this prohibition. It provides that the prohibition against 
circumvention “shall not apply to persons who are users of a copyrighted 
work which is in a particular class of works, if such persons are, or 
are likely to be in the succeeding three-year period, adversely affected 
by virtue of such prohibition in their ability to make noninfringing 
uses of that particular class of works under this title” as determined 
in a rulemaking proceeding.

more...
http://www.archive.org/iathreads/post-view.php?id=82097



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