Good news re Anticircumvention

[Moonraker]

The Librarian of Congress, on the recommendation of the Register of Copyrights, has announced the classes of works subject to the exemption from the prohibition against circumvention of technological measures that control access to copyrighted works. Persons making noninfringing uses of the following six classes of works will not be subject to the prohibition against circumventing access controls (17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)) during the next three years.

http://www.copyright.gov/1201/

I am particularly glad to see section 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.

Does this mean that we will soon have tools at our disposal to circumvent DRM for non-infringing uses?

[TadW]

VERY NICE! Cory Boing Doctorow has picked it up as well:

... However, the office refused to grant exemptions that would benefit the general public -- space- and format-shifting, backing up your DVDs -- and they took back an earlier exemption that let people reverse-engineer the blacklists maintained by censorware companies to bring some transparency to their process.