The Copyright Office is soliciting comments on the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause. This is the law that makes it illegal to provide tools or techniques for defeating access-control systems — why you can't legally distribute an open source DVD player that lets you watch foreign movies at home (even though watching foreign movies isn't a copyright violation, providing the tools to accomplish this is illegal).
Anti-circumvention lets rightsholders rewrite copyright law. Even though you may have the right, under copyright law, to make some use of the work you buy (say, resell it to a friend), rights-holders need only implement an access-control system that makes this impossible without circumventing, and they can take away your rights. No one is allowed to give you a tool that would let you get your rights back. What's more, the access-control doesn't even have to be very technically good (CSS, the system used to control use of DVDs, was broken by teenagers in a day), because the law forbids your crossing the line.
The Copyright Office wants comments from people who tried to do something legal and useful but were locked out by access-control, because they are considering making exceptions to the anti-circumvention rule. EFF is recruiting volunteers to contribute to this:
- People who have had bad experience with access-controls, to write comments
- Editors, who will put the comments into the format the Copyright Office requires
- Law-students, who will check the comments to make sure that the phraasing speaks directly to the questions the Copyright Office is asking
The commentors, editors and law-students will work together to produce a body of comments so effective that the Copyright Office can't ignore it. It's not often that writing a letter or volunteering to edit a comment can have a direct impact on your rights. This is a critical opportunity — please don't pass it up. Spread the word!
(Thanks, Ren!)
