Expanded DMCA Section 1201 Exemptions Show Need for Reform, Stakeholders Say
Public Knowledge Vice President-Legal Affairs Sherwin Siy and other participants in the rulemaking process of the Copyright Office triennial Digital Millennium Copyright Act Section 1201 exemptions praised the CO and Library of Congress Wednesday for granting many of their requested Section 1201 exemptions. They also said during a conference call with reporters Wednesday that they're pushing for Congress to fix what they consider DMCA’s expanding scope. The LOC Tuesday granted 10 CO-recommended Section 1201 exemptions covering 22 of the 27 proposed exemptions originally under review, including an expansion of existing device unlocking and jailbreaking exemptions and exemptions for “good-faith security research” (see 1510270056).
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The 10 exemptions were an increase over the exemptions granted during the 2012 review, but that’s “due to the fact that more people asked for more exemptions in the first place,” Siy said. He and others pushed for legislation to limit DMCA’s scope, saying it has continued to expand, and the CO’s next Section 1201 triennial review is likely to result in even more requested exemptions. “We’ll have to have this process again and again every three years until the end of time unless something changes,” he said. Electronic Frontier Foundation Staff Attorney Kit Walsh cited the Unlocking Technology Act (HR-1587) as a remedy for DMCA’s “fundamental problems.”
Several of the granted exemptions also have “counterproductive limitations,” particularly a requirement that two granted exemptions allowing circumvention of technological protections measures on vehicle and other products’ embedded software not take effect until Oct. 28, 2016, Walsh said. The yearlong delay in the software exemptions’ effective date is “strange and perhaps unnecessary,” likely putting college students and others researching security vulnerabilities in software in continued “legal jeopardy for any work they do,” said Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute assistant professor Matthew Green.