The Federal copyright exemptions in the DMCA for jailbreaking are set to expire, and the government has asked for public comment. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is marshaling resources and public feedback to keep the exemption in place.
In a statement at its website, senior staff attorney Marcia Hoffmann said, “The DMCA is supposed to block copyright infringement, but it’s been misused to threaten tinkerers and users who just want to make their devices more secure and more functional. The U.S. Copyright Office should hear from concerned Americans who want to run software of their choice on the gadgets of their choice.”
Another initiative involves preserving the ability of creative artists to break the DRM on DVDs in order to remix clips. The EFF “also asked for legal protections for artists and critics who use excerpts from DVDs or Internet video services to create new, remixed works.”
The EFF article continued: “In passing the DMCA, Congress allowed the Copyright Office to create certain kinds of exemptions to help mitigate the harms the law causes to legitimate, non-infringing use of copyrighted materials.”
EFF staff attorney Mitch Stolz elaborated. “Overreaching copyright law can hurt Americans’ free expression and innovation rights. That’s what we are fighting in Congress with the Internet blacklist bills like SOPA and PIPA, and it’s what we are fighting here.”
For more information, see the link above as well as “Jailbreaking is Not a Crime” and “Rip. Mix. Make.”
The e-mail addresses of the EFF attorneys are in the article.