News
U.S. Copyright Office Rules on Infringement Exemptions
posted on by Lynzee Loveridge
The U.S. Copyright Office ruled on exemptions to the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) anti-circumvention protections last week. The office declared that consumers could "make use of short portions...for the purpose of criticism or comment" in noncommercial videos such as remix or mash-up videos, documentary films, multimedia ebooks offering film analysis, and for educational purposes such as a film studies classroom without penalty. These circumventions apply to online distribution services as well.
The ruling on certain "hacking" activities was mixed. The Copyright Office reauthorized an allowance to circumvent access controls on mobile phones to allow software interoperability but also stated it was illegal to "jailbreak" phones to use on other services, such as taking an AT&T iPhone and connecting it through Verizon or Sprint carriers. Similar jailbreaking was also banned for iPad devices.
The office also ruled that cracking DVDs for personal use and time-shifting allowances is a violation of copyright law. Time shifting is the recording of programming to a storage medium to be viewed or listened to at a time more convenient to the consumer. The ruling conflicts with a previous decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1984 that stated that time shifting was a fair use, represented no substantial harm to the copyright holder and would not contribute to a diminished marketplace for its product.
Thanks to Daniel Zelter for the news tip.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
