James Delahunty
8 Oct 2005 14:50
The U.S. Copyright Office is conducting a periodic review of anti-cracking provisions set in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and is seeking feedback from the public on what you would like to see cracked and why. If there is a genuine reason why you think something should be allowed to he cracked, the office might just allow it. Congress mandated that the register of Copyrights revisit the anti-circumvention section every three years to ensure that consumers have proper access to things they have purchased.
Last time around, the office allowed the bypassing of copy protection on computer games available only in obsolete formats, cracking ebooks copy protection so that blind people can use software to read it out, cracking of web filtering software to view the list of blocked sites and cracking computer programs protected by a "dongle" that is malfunctioning. The office will take written submissions through December 1st and will accept rebuttals until February 2nd 2006.
After this time has passed, beginning in April the office will hold two sets of hearings. Basically, if the copyright office can be convinced that something copy protected prevents fair use of the work, then it might allow the copy protection to be circumvented legally. "I suspect that we will hear shortly from people who feel they have not been able to use copyrighted materials because of the DMCA," said Ralph Oman, an intellectual property attorney and former register of copyrights.
Source:
Wired
Thanks to thugs121 and Londor for the News Submission.