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Law Talks
Copy Control Complaint Desk Opens
Frustrated with technological access controls on digital media? Disdainful of the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act? The feds are inviting you to vent.
The Copyright Office is now accepting comments on the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which made it illegal to copy digital entertainment and imposed a number of other restrictions that have drawn users' ire. The comment period ends December 18. A comment form is available online.
The DMCA was heralded by advocates as protecting the rights of artists, writers, and even programmers, to prevent their digital work from being illegally copied and distributed without their permission. The act says, "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
But many in the tech industry have grown increasingly wary of its provisions.
The provision was invoked to great attention in the tech community when the U.S. government charged Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov with violating the DMCA when he demonstrated and marketed a program that would thwart copy-protection on Adobe's eBook file format. Charges against Sklyarov were dropped, but a case is still pending against his company, ElcomSoft, even though its product is legal in its home country.
The law also drew attention when a professor charged that it stifled academic research. A digital watermark firm had challenged all comers to crack its technology, then threatened Professor Edward Felten and his team with prosecution under DMCA if they published their findings.
The DMCA also allows exemptions to the anti-circumvention rule, intended to protect fair-use rights of consumers. The Copyright Office determines which types of works fall under this exemption.

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