WIPO Copyright and Performances and Phonograms Treaties Implementation Act
Encyclopedia
The WIPO Copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...

 and Performance
Performance
A performance, in performing arts, generally comprises an event in which a performer or group of performers behave in a particular way for another group of people, the audience. Choral music and ballet are examples. Usually the performers participate in rehearsals beforehand. Afterwards audience...

s and Phonogram
Sound recording and reproduction
Sound recording and reproduction is an electrical or mechanical inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording technology are analog recording and digital recording...

s Treaties
Treaty
A treaty is an express agreement under international law entered into by actors in international law, namely sovereign states and international organizations. A treaty may also be known as an agreement, protocol, covenant, convention or exchange of letters, among other terms...

 Implementation Act
, is a part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization . It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to...

 (DMCA), a 1998 U.S.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 law. It has two major portions, Section 102, which implements the requirements of the WIPO Copyright Treaty, and Section 103, which arguably provides additional protection against the circumvention of copy prevention systems (with some exceptions) and prohibits the removal of copyright management information.

Section 102

Section 102 gives the act its name, which is based on the requirements of the WIPO Copyright Treaty concluded at Geneva, Switzerland, on 20 December 1996. It modifies US copyright law to include works produced in the countries which sign the following treaties:
  • the Universal Copyright Convention
    Universal Copyright Convention
    The Universal Copyright Convention , adopted at Geneva in 1952, is one of the two principal international conventions protecting copyright; the other is the Berne Convention....

  • the Geneva Phonograms Convention (Convention for the Protection of Producers of Phonograms Against Unauthorized Duplication of Their Phonograms, Geneva, Switzerland, 29 October 1971)
  • the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works
    Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works
    The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, usually known as the Berne Convention, is an international agreement governing copyright, which was first accepted in Berne, Switzerland in 1886.- Content :...

  • the WTO Agreement (as defined in the Uruguay Round Agreements Act
    Uruguay Round Agreements Act
    The Uruguay Round Agreements Act was an Act of Congress in the United States that implemented in U.S. law the provisions agreed upon at the Uruguay Round of negotiations of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade .- Legislative history :U.S...

    )
  • the WIPO Copyright Treaty signed at Geneva, Switzerland on 20 December 1996
  • the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty
    WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty
    The WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty is an international treaty signed by the member states of the World Intellectual Property Organization was adopted in Geneva on December 20, 1996...

     concluded at Geneva, Switzerland on 20 December 1996
  • any other copyright treaty to which the United States is a party

Section 103

Section 103 provoked most of the controversy which resulted from the act. It is often called DMCA anti-circumvention
Anti-circumvention
Anti-circumvention refers to laws which prohibit the circumvention of technological barriers for using a digital good in certain ways which the rightsholders do not wish to allow...

provisions. It restricts the ability to make, sell, or distribute devices which circumvent Digital Rights Management
Digital rights management
Digital rights management is a class of access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals with the intent to limit the use of digital content and devices after sale. DRM is any technology that inhibits uses of digital content that...

 systems, adding Chapter 12 (sections 1201 through 1205) to US copyright law.

Section 1201 makes it illegal to:
  • (1) "circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work" except as allowed after rulemaking procedures administered by the Register of Copyrights every three years. (The exemptions made through the three-yearly review do not apply to the supply of circumvention devices, only to the act of circumvention itself.)
  • (2) "manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in" a device, service or component which is primarily intended to circumvent "a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work," and which either has limited commercially significant other uses or is marketed for the anti-circumvention purpose.
  • (3) "manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in" a device, service or component which is primarily intended to circumvent "protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner," and which either has limited commercially significant other uses or is marketed for the anti-circumvention purpose.
  • sell any VHS VCR, 8 mm analogue video tape recorder, Beta video recorder or other analogue video cassette recorder which is not affected by automatic gain control copy protection (the basis of Macrovision
    Macrovision
    Rovi Corporation is a globally operating, US-based company that provides guidance technology, entertainment data, copy protection, industry standard networking and media management technology for digital entertainment devices and services...

    ), with some exceptions.


The act creates a distinction between access-control measures and copy-control measures. An access-control measure limits access to the contents of the protected work, for example by encryption
Encryption
In cryptography, encryption is the process of transforming information using an algorithm to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge, usually referred to as a key. The result of the process is encrypted information...

. A copy-control measure only limits the ability of a user to copy the work. Though the act makes it illegal to distribute technology to circumvent either type of copy protection
Copy protection
Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy obstruction, copy prevention and copy restriction, refer to techniques used for preventing the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media, usually for copyright reasons.- Terminology :Media corporations have always used the term...

, only the action of circumventing access-control measures is illegal. The action of circumventing a copy-control measure is not prohibited, though any copies made are still subject to other copyright law.

The section goes on to limit its apparent reach. The statute says that:
  • it will not affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use;
  • it is not necessary to design components specifically to use copy protection systems;
  • "nothing in this section shall enlarge or diminish any rights of free speech or the press for activities using consumer electronics, telecommunications, or computing products";
  • circumvention for law enforcement, intelligence collection, and other government activities is allowed;
  • reverse engineering to achieve interoperability of computer programs is allowed;
  • encryption research is allowed;
  • systems to prevent minors from accessing some internet content are allowed to circumvent;
  • circumvention to protect personal information by disabling part of a system is allowed; and
  • security testing is allowed.

In addition, the statute has a "primary intent" requirement, which creates evidentiary problems for those seeking to prove a violation. In order for a violation to be proved, it must be shown that the alleged violator must have primarily intended to circumvent copyright protection. However, if the primary intent is to achieve interoperability of software or devices, the circumvention is permitted and no violation has occurred.

Section 1202 prohibits the removal of copyright management information.

On balance, it is difficult to say whether the Act expands copyright enforcement powers or limits them. Because it does not affect the underlying substantive copyright protections, the Act can be viewed as merely changing the penalties and procedures available for enforcement. Because it grants safe harbors in various situations for research, reverse engineering, circumvention, security, and protection of minors, the Act in many ways limits the scope of copyright enforcement.

Section 103 cases

Judicial enforcement of the statute and the treaty has not been nearly as far-reaching as was originally hoped by its advocates. Here are a handful of notable instances where advocates of proprietary encryption techniques sought to use the law to their advantage:

DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

s are often encrypted with the Content Scrambling System (CSS). To play a CSS DVD, it must be decrypted. Jon Johansen and two anonymous colleagues wrote DeCSS
DeCSS
DeCSS is a computer program capable of decrypting content on a commercially produced DVD video disc. Before the release of DeCSS, there was no way for computers running a Linux-based operating system to play video DVDs....

, a program that did this decryption, so they could watch DVDs in Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

. US servers distributing this software were asked to stop on the theory they were violating this law. Mr. Johansen was tried in his native Norway under that country's analogous statute. The Norwegian courts ultimately acquitted Mr. Johansen because he was acting consistent with interoperability and he could not be held responsible for others' motives. The software is now widely available.

2600 Magazine was sued under this law for distributing a list of links to websites where DeCSS could be downloaded. The court found that the "primary purpose" of the defendants' actions was to promote redistribution of DVDs, in part because the defendants admitted as much. See Universal v. Reimerdes
Universal v. Reimerdes
Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Reimerdes was the first test of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act , a United States federal law.The plaintiffs, 8 movie studios, successfully sought an injunction against the distribution of DeCSS, a program capable of decrypting content protected using the...

, 111 F. Supp. 2d 346 (S.D.N.Y. 2000). The finding was upheld by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on the specific facts of the case, but the appellate court left open the possibility that different facts could change the result. See Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Corley, 273 F.3d 429 (2d Cir. 2001), at footnotes 5 and 16.

A similar program, also by Johansen, decrypted iTunes Music Store files so they could be played on Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

. Apple
Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...

 had the software taken down from several servers for violating this law. However, Apple Computer has since reversed its stand and begun advocating encryption-free distribution of content.

Dmitry Sklyarov
Dmitry Sklyarov
Dmitry Vitalevich Sklyarov is a Russian computer programmer known for his 2001 arrest by American law enforcement over software copyright restrictions under the DMCA anti-circumvention provision...

, a Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n programmer
Programmer
A programmer, computer programmer or coder is someone who writes computer software. The term computer programmer can refer to a specialist in one area of computer programming or to a generalist who writes code for many kinds of software. One who practices or professes a formal approach to...

 was jailed under this law when he visited the U.S.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, because he had written a program in Russia which allowed users to access documents for which they had forgotten the password. (He was eventually acquitted by a jury of all counts, reportedly because the jury thought the law was unfair—a phenomenon known as jury nullification
Jury nullification
Jury nullification occurs in a trial when a jury reaches a verdict contrary to the judge's instructions as to the law.A jury verdict contrary to the letter of the law pertains only to the particular case before it; however, if a pattern of acquittals develops in response to repeated attempts to...

.)

aibohack.com, a website which distributed tools to make Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....

's AIBO
AIBO
AIBO was one of several types of robotic pets designed and manufactured by Sony...

 robotic pet do new tricks, like dance jazz. Sony alleged that the tools violated this law, and asked for them to be taken down. (After negative press they changed their mind.)

A company selling mod chips for Sony PlayStation
PlayStation
The is a 32-bit fifth-generation video game console first released by Sony Computer Entertainment in Japan on December 3, .The PlayStation was the first of the PlayStation series of consoles and handheld game devices. The PlayStation 2 was the console's successor in 2000...

s, which allowed the systems to play video games from other countries, was raided by the US government and their products were seized under this law.

Smart cards, while they have many other purposes, are also used by DirecTV
DirecTV
DirecTV is an American direct broadcast satellite service provider and broadcaster based in El Segundo, California. Its satellite service, launched on June 17, 1994, transmits digital satellite television and audio to households in the United States, Latin America, and the Anglophone Caribbean. ...

 to decrypt their television satellite signals for paying users. Distributors of smart card
Smart card
A smart card, chip card, or integrated circuit card , is any pocket-sized card with embedded integrated circuits. A smart card or microprocessor cards contain volatile memory and microprocessor components. The card is made of plastic, generally polyvinyl chloride, but sometimes acrylonitrile...

 readers, which could create smart cards (including ones that could decrypt DirecTV signals) were raided by DirecTV
DirecTV
DirecTV is an American direct broadcast satellite service provider and broadcaster based in El Segundo, California. Its satellite service, launched on June 17, 1994, transmits digital satellite television and audio to households in the United States, Latin America, and the Anglophone Caribbean. ...

 and their products and customer lists were seized. DirecTV then sent a letter to over 100,000 purchasers of the readers and filed lawsuits against over 5,000. They offered to not file or drop the suit for $3500, less than litigating the case would cost. (The suits are ongoing.)

Lexmark
Lexmark
Lexmark International, Inc. is an American corporation which develops and manufactures printing and imaging products, including laser and inkjet printers, multifunction products, printing supplies, and services for business and individual consumers...

 sued Static Control Components which made replacement recycled toner cartridge
Toner cartridge
A toner cartridge, also called laser toner, is the consumable component of a laser printer. Toner cartridges contain toner powder, a fine, dry mixture of plastic particles, carbon, and black or other coloring agents that make the actual image on the paper...

s for their printer
Computer printer
In computing, a printer is a peripheral which produces a text or graphics of documents stored in electronic form, usually on physical print media such as paper or transparencies. Many printers are primarily used as local peripherals, and are attached by a printer cable or, in most new printers, a...

s under this law. Lexmark initially won a preliminary injunction, but that injunction was vacated by the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

The Chamberlain Group
Chamberlain Group
The Chamberlain Group is a manufacturer of garage door openers and associated equipment headquartered in Elmhurst, Illinois. It is a subsidiary of The Duchossois Group, a family business owned by Richard L. Duchossois...

 sued Skylink Technologies for creating garage door
Garage door
A garage door is a large door on a garage that can either be opened manually or by a garage door opener. Garage doors are necessarily large to allow passage of automobiles and/or trucks.-Description:...

 openers that opened their own garage doors under this law. (The lawsuit is ongoing, though the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has issued a ruling casting serious doubt on Chamberlain's likelihood of success.)

Prof. Edward Felten
Edward Felten
Edward William Felten is a professor of computer science and public affairs at Princeton University. On November 4, 2010 he was named the Chief Technologist for the United States Federal Trade Commission, a position he officially assumed January 3, 2011.Felten has done a variety of computer...

 and several colleagues, were threatened with a lawsuit under this law if they presented a paper at a technical conference describing how they participated in the Secure Digital Music Initiative
Secure Digital Music Initiative
Secure Digital Music Initiative was a forum formed in late 1998, composed of more than 200 IT, consumer electronics, security technology, ISP and recording industry companies, ostensibly with the purpose of developing technology specifications that protected the playing, storing and distributing...

 (SDMI) decryption challenge. (After Felten sued for declaratory judgment
Declaratory judgment
A declaratory judgment is a judgment of a court in a civil case which declares the rights, duties, or obligations of one or more parties in a dispute. A declaratory judgment is legally binding, but it does not order any action by a party. In this way, the declaratory judgment is like an action to...

, the threat was dropped.)

Secure Network Operations (SNOsoft), a group of secrurity researchers, published a security flaw in HP
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...

's Tru64 operating system after HP refused to fix it. HP threatened to sue them under this law. (After negative press they dropped the threat.)

Blackboard Inc.
Blackboard Inc.
Blackboard Inc. is an enterprise software company with its corporate headquarters in Washington, D.C. and is primarily known as a developer of education software, in particular learning management systems. Blackboard was founded by CEO Michael Chasen and chairman Matthew Pittinsky in 1997 and...

 filed a civil complaint against university students Billy Hoffman
Billy Hoffman
Billy Hoffman, also known as Acidus, is an American hacker, born in Atlanta, Georgia on October 15, 1980.-Biography:His father is a sales consultant and his mother is a historian and a former high school social studies teacher. Hoffman created StripeSnoop, an application which analyzes data on...

 and Virgil Griffith
Virgil Griffith
Virgil Griffith , also known as Romanpoet, is an American hacker, known for his involvement in a 2003 lawsuit with Blackboard Inc. and his creation of WikiScanner. He has published papers on artificial life and is currently a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology...

 who were researching security holes in the Blackboard Transaction System. A judge issued an injunction on the two students to prevent them from publishing their research. Blackboard Inc. had previously sent a complaint to the students saying they were violating this law. Since that time, however, Blackboard has pledged to cooperate with open-source developers. On February 1, 2007, Blackboard announced via press release "The Blackboard Patent Pledge". In this pledge to the open source and do-it-yourself course management community, the company vows to forever refrain from asserting its patent rights against open-source developers, except when it is itself sued for patent infringement.

Princeton
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

 student J. Alex Haldermanhttp://www.cs.princeton.edu/~jhalderm/ was threatened by SunnComm
SunnComm
SunnComm International Inc. was the company that developed and owned the MediaMax technology software package, which was sold as a form of copy protection for compact discs...

 under this law for explaining how Mediamax CD-3
MediaMax CD-3
MediaMax CD-3 is a software package created by SunnComm and was sold as a form of copy protection for compact discs. It was used by the record label RCA Records/BMG, and targets both Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Some users regard the software as a form of malware since its purpose is to...

 CD copy protection worked. Halderman explained that the copy protection could be defeated by holding down the shift key when inserting the CD into Windows (this prevented autorun
Autorun
AutoRun and the companion feature AutoPlay are components of the Microsoft Windows operating system that dictate what actions the system takes when a drive is mounted....

, which installed the Mediamax protection software). After press attention SunnComm withdrew their threat.

Blizzard Entertainment
Blizzard Entertainment
Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher founded on February 8, 1991 under the name Silicon & Synapse by three graduates of UCLA, Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham and Frank Pearce and currently owned by French company Activision Blizzard...

 threatened the developers of bnetd
Bnetd
bnetd is a software package that was reverse engineered from Blizzard Entertainment's Battle.net online multiplayer gaming service, providing near-complete emulation. The software allows users to create and play games on their own servers, instead of Battle.net servers...

, a freely available clone of battle.net
Battle.net
Battle.net is a gaming service provided by Blizzard Entertainment. Battle.net was launched in November 30, 1996 with the release of Blizzard's action-RPG Diablo. Battle.net was the first online gaming service incorporated directly into the games that make use of it, in contrast to the external...

, a proprietary server system used by all Blizzard games on the Internet. Blizzard claims that these servers allow circumvention of its CD key copy protection scheme. (The Electronic Frontier Foundation
Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States...

 is currently negotiating a settlement.)

The Advanced Access Content System
Advanced Access Content System
The Advanced Access Content System is a standard for content distribution and digital rights management, intended to restrict access to and copying of the "next generation" of optical discs and DVDs. The specification was publicly released in April 2005 and the standard has been adopted as the...

 Licensing Administrator, LLC sent violation notices to a number of sites who had published the encryption key to HD-DVDs. The key and the software with which to decrypt the disks had been published by an anonymous programmer. When Digg
Digg
Digg is a social news website. Prior to Digg v4, its cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. Digg's popularity prompted the creation of copycat social networking sites with story submission and voting systems...

 took down references to the key, its users revolted and began distributing it in many creative ways. Eventually, Digg was unable to stop its users and gave up. AACS executives have vowed to fight on. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6623331.stm. See the AACS encryption key controversy
AACS encryption key controversy
A controversy surrounding the AACS cryptographic key arose in April 2007 when the Motion Picture Association of America and the Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator, LLC began issuing demand letters to websites publishing a 128-bit number, represented in hexadecimal as 09 F9 11...

.

Open-source software to decrypt content scrambled with the Content Scrambling System presents an intractable problem with the application of this law. Because the decryption is necessary to achieve interoperability of open source operating systems with proprietary operating systems, the circumvention is protected by the Act. However, the nature of open source software makes the decryption techniques available to those who wish to violate copyright laws. Consequently, the exception for interoperability effectively swallows the rule against circumvention.

Criticisms

Large industry associations like the MPAA and RIAA say the law is necessary to prevent copyright infringement in the digital era, while a growing coalition of open source software developers and Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 activists argue that the law stifles innovation while doing little to stop copyright infringement. Because the content must ultimately be decrypted in order for users to understand it, near-perfect copying of the decrypted content always remains possible for pirates. Meanwhile, developers of open source and other next-generation software must write complex and sophisticated software routines to ensure interoperability of their software with legacy Windows technology. Thus, the opponents are angry at having to bear the costs of technology that results in no benefit.

Some proponents of the law claim it was necessary to implement several WIPO treaties. Opponents respond that the law was not necessary, even if it was it went far beyond what the treaties require, and the treaties were written and passed by the same industry lobbyists people who wanted to pass this law. They also note that the severe ambiguities in the law, its difficulty in enforcement, and its numerous exceptions make it ineffective in achieving its stated goal of protecting copyright holders.

Others claim that the law is necessary to prevent online copyright infringement, using perfect digital copies. Opponents note that copyright infringement was already illegal and the DMCA does not outlaw infringement but only legal uses like display and performance.

Opponents of the law charge that it violates the First Amendment
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering...

 on its face, because it restricts the distribution of computer software, like DeCSS. The Second Circuit rejected this argument in MPAA v. 2600, suggesting that software was not really speech. Under the specific facts of the case, however, the Constitutional decision was not controlling. The defendants' ultimate purpose was to make possible the copying of copyrighted content, not publishing their own speech. Most other circuits that have considered the issue concluded software is speech, but have not considered this law.

Opponents also say it creates serious chilling effects stifling legitimate First Amendment speech. For example, John Wiley & Sons
John Wiley & Sons
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., also referred to as Wiley, is a global publishing company that specializes in academic publishing and markets its products to professionals and consumers, students and instructors in higher education, and researchers and practitioners in scientific, technical, medical, and...

 changed their mind and decided not to publish a book by Andrew Huang
Andrew Huang
Andrew "bunnie" Huang is an American hacker, who holds a Ph.D in electrical engineering from MIT and is the author of the 2003 book Hacking the Xbox: An Introduction to Reverse Engineering...

 about security flaws in the Xbox
Xbox
The Xbox is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Microsoft. It was released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and March 14, 2002 in Australia and Europe and is the predecessor to the Xbox 360. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console...

 because of this law. After Huang tried to self-publish, his online store provider dropped support because of similar concerns. (The book is now being published by No Starch Press
No Starch Press
No Starch Press is a publishing company specializing in computer books for the technically savvy, or "geek entertainment" as they term it. They have published such titles as Hacking: The Art of Exploitation, Silence on the Wire, Steal This Computer Book 4.0, Steal This File Sharing Book, Write...

.)

Opponents also argue that the law might be read to give full control to copyright holders over what uses are and are not permitted, essentially eliminating fair use
Fair use
Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders...

. For example, ebook readers protected by this law can prevent the user from copying short excerpts from the book, printing a couple pages, and having the computer read the book aloud—all of which are legal under copyright law, but this law could be expanded to prohibit building a tool to do what is otherwise legal. However, other legal scholars note that the law's emphasis on violations of preexisting rights of copyright holders ensures that the DMCA does not expand those rights. If the purpose of the activity is not to violate a preexisting right, the activity is not illegal. Fair use, the scholars say, would still be protected.

Copyright Office rulemaking procedures

As required by the DMCA, in 1999 the U.S. Copyright Office launched a public appeal for comments on the DMCA in order "to determine whether there are particular classes of works as to which users are, or are likely to be, adversely affected in their ability to make noninfringing uses due to the prohibition on circumvention of access controls". The entire set of written submissions, testimonial transcripts, and final recommendations and rulings for all three rulemakings (2000, 2003, and 2006) are available here.

External links

, Text of the law
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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