When the Copyright Office Meets, the Future Needs a Seat at the Table; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), February 21, 2018

Cory Doctorow, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); When the Copyright Office Meets, the Future Needs a Seat at the Table

"Every three years, EFF's lawyers spend weeks huddling in their offices, composing carefully worded pleas we hope will persuade the Copyright Office and the Librarian of Congress to grant Americans a modest, temporary permission to use our own property in ways that are already legal.

Yeah, we think that's weird, too. But it's been than way ever since 1998, when Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, whose Section 1201 established a ban on tampering with "access controls for copyrighted works" (also known as "Digital Rights Management" or "DRM"). It doesn't matter if you want to do something absolutely legitimate, something that there is no law against -- if you have to bypass DRM to do it, it's not allowed.

What's more, if someone wants to provide you with a tool to get around the DRM, they could face up to five years in prison and a $500,000 fine, for a first offense, even if the tool is only ever used to accomplish legal, legitimate ends."

COPYRIGHT OFFICE RECOMMENDS PERMANENT EXEMPTIONS TO SOFTWARE LOCKS; Repair Association via KTIC, July 7, 2017

Joe Gangwish, Repair Association via KTIC; COPYRIGHT OFFICE RECOMMENDS PERMANENT EXEMPTIONS TO SOFTWARE LOCKS

"A U.S. Copyright Office report says it no longer wants to review exemptions to Section 1201 of the Digital Millenium Copyrights Act every three years. The office wants Congress to pass laws that give consumers a permanent “right-to-repair.”"

Tell the Copyright Office: Copyright Law Shouldn't Punish Research and Repair; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), 10/11/16

Corynne McSherry, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); Tell the Copyright Office: Copyright Law Shouldn't Punish Research and Repair:

"In enacting the “anti-circumvention” provisions of the DMCA, Congress ostensibly intended to stop copyright “pirates” from defeating DRM and other content access or copy restrictions on copyrighted works and to ban the “black box” devices intended for that purpose. In practice, the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions haven’t had much impact on unauthorized sharing of copyrighted content. Instead, they’ve hampered lawful creativity, innovation, competition, security, and privacy.

In the past few years, there’s been a growing movement to reform the law. As locked-down copyrighted software shows up in more and more devices, from phones to refrigerators to tractors, more and more people are realizing how important it is to be able to break those locks, for all kinds of legitimate reasons. If you can’t tinker with it, repair it, or peek under the hood, then you don’t really own it—someone else does, and their interests will take precedence over yours.

It seems the Copyright Office has heard those concerns. As part of an ongoing study, it’s asking for comments (PDF) on whether it should recommend that Congress enact a series of permanent exemptions to the law for several important and useful activities, including security research and repair."