A few minutes ago, the U.S. Copyright Office issued its rulemaking on exemptions from the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions which will be valid until October 2006. Now, there are four classes of works exempted from 17 U.S.C. 1201 (a) (1) (A):
- filtering software applications that use DRM technology to hide their filter lists. This is a slightly modified version of an exemption that the Copyright Office had introduced in October 2000.
- computer programs that are protected by mal-functioning and obsolete dongles. This is again a slightly modified version of an earlier exemption from October 2000.
- computer programs and video games that are only available in formats which have become obsolete and which require the original media or hardware as a condition of access. This new exemption was suggested by the Internet Archive which needs access to old computer programs and video games in order to migrate them to new storage media and platforms for archival purposes.
- ebooks which disable the "read-aloud" function and prevent screen readers to render the text into a format that is accessible to the blind. This new exemption is intended to help the blind to circumvent DRM technologies that prevent them from accessing content.
Although both new exemptions should be welcomed, the new rulemaking by the Copyright Office demonstrates for another time that the underlying policy problems - to what extent should DRM technology receive legal protection and how can fair use be preserved in this environment - are not (and, IMHO, cannot) be solved by the Copyright Office, but are ultimately a matter for Congress or the Supreme Court to resolve. Whether that's a realistic goal, is another question.