The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was granted three exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)’s anti-circumvention provisions today.
For the gadget-hungry among us, the most critical of these includes the ruling that jailbreaking (or rooting) your mobile phone to run apps from any source is now no longer a grey area; it’s firmly on the legal side of the fence. Take note though that distribution of the means to jailbreak phones is not covered by the ruling, and Apple fans can rest assured that Apple has plenty of ways to discourage jail-breakers. They (and other phone manufacturers) are not required to stop implementing protection against jailbreaking, they just can’t sue you if you bypass those restrictions.
The Librarian of Congress’ 2006 ruling exempting mobile phone unlocking has been extended, though it was modified in the process. It now only covers used mobile phones, not new ones. This exemption allows consumers to keep their phones when they switch carriers.
Perhaps the biggest and most wide-reaching exemption the court granted concerns the fair use of CSS-protected media, such as feature films. Creating mashups of popular movies has been popular for years, but has carried with it the fear of large fines or even imprisonment for copyright infringement.
Copyright law has traditionally treated such creations as being within the bounds of fair use, but the DMCA closed that door to would-be Internet movie makers – or at least left it fraught with potential legal peril. The door is once again wide open and peril-free, and not just for educational use, but for documentary and non-commercial use as well.
“Finally the creative people that make those videos won’t have to worry that they are breaking the law in the process, even though their works are clearly fair uses.” – EFF Senior Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry, via EFF Press Release.
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