The Library of Congress has published six exemptions to the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which criminalises duplication of
material copyrighted to someone else. The exemption is from
punishment for breaking the kinds of copy controls on material
which are designed to stop unauthorised duplication.
One of the six exemptions is for computer software or games for
the purposes of preservation, but only if the original machine,
format or technology involved is obsolete.
The ruling grants exemption to "computer programs and video
games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and that
require the original media or hardware as a condition of access,
when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of preservation
or archival reproduction of published digital works by a library or
archive".
"A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system
necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no
longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the
commercial marketplace," it says.
The Internet Archive is a non-profit project started in 1996 to
create a complete record of the increasing amounts of digital
information being created as the internet developed. It now
archives 20 terabytes of data a month and has two petabytes (two
million gigabytes) of data stored in it.
The Library of Congress's other exemptions to the DCMA include
permission for users of mobile phones to circumvent the technology
which makes the phone only work with one network. Another exemption
allows the duplication of 'dongle protected' software where the
dongle has been damaged and a replacement is no longer
available.
Another exemption allows educational establishments to 'break'
digital rights management (DRM) technology for audiovisual works to
be used by media studies or film classes, while another exemption
that allows users to bypass DRM on CDs in order to test and fix DRM
technology which might damage the user's computer.
"Thanks to the hard work of two great law school students of
Peter Jaszi of American University, Jieun Kim and Doug Agopsowicz,
the Internet Archive and other libraries may continue to preserve
software and video game titles without fear of going to jail," said
a statement from the Internet Archive.
"This is a happy moment, but on the other hand this exception is
so limited it leaves the overall draconian nature of the DMCA in
effect," said the statement. "A total of more than $50,000 of
pro-bono lawyer time has been spent to just affect this exemption
and its continuation. We hope that Congress, and other governments,
will pass more balanced copyright laws to allow at least libraries,
archives, research and scholarship to flourish without the current
dark clouds of litigation."
The British Library has been involved in similar lobbying and
wants copyright law to change so that it can store digital material
without breaking the law. It has sent its copyright reform
manifesto to the government.
