The U.S. Copyright Office will begin taking public comments November 19 on the anticircumvention clause of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The law, enacted in 1998, calls for the registrar of copyrights and the assistant secretary for communications and information to revisit certain aspects of the law every three years, Wired News reported October 16.
The notice announcing the round of comments asks for responses from all interested parties—specifically mentioning libraries and archives—“on whether noninfringing uses of certain classes of works are, or are likely to be, adversely affected” by the law’s prohibition on breaking encryption technologies. The Copyright Office is seeking specific examples where the law has caused “actual instances of verifiable problems occurring in the marketplace,” warning that inconvenience or “theoretical critiques” are not sufficient. Written comments are due by December 18.
“This rule making is not as protective of fair use as we might like,” Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Wired News. “The Copyright Office is in the strange position that they could find that there are legitimate reasons for circumvention, but the DMCA still makes the tools for that circumvention illegal.”
Two bills were recently introduced in the Houses of Representatives that would add fair-use protections to the DMCA.
Posted October 21, 2002.