Quote:
Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer
There's an interesting story here at Ars Technica about a proposal to amend the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the " DMCA") in the U.S. to allow a person to break a digital lock on a piece of media if they're not doing so to facilitate copyright infringement. The example in the article of something that this amendment would make legal is ripping DVDs for personal use, but another obvious example is removing DRM from an eBook for personal use.
For those unaware of the issue, the DMCA provides that:
The effect of the above is to make it illegal to remove DRM from a movie, eBook or piece of software that a person has legally bought, whether or not they would otherwise be permitted to do so under copyright law. The provision has been used in a lawsuit against a magazine, to make threats against Princeton Professor Edward Felten's team of researchers, and as part of a prosecution of Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov.
I'm not American, but I find the proposed amendment very interesting as Canada adopted somewhat similar anti-circumvention rules in its Copyright Act due to pressure from the U.S. |
I'll remind you once again that the DMCA is self-contradictory on the subject of the legality of DRM-removal (
from legitimately-acquired-content for personal use only!). See (yet again)
one of my many posts on the subject from the past few years. Until one or more courts produce rulings, nobody really knows. Darn it! That said, an explicit change in the law would be most welcome.
Xenophon