Library of Congress Impacts the Digital World

Among the newest six classes of works (COW) additions which provide exceptions to copyright law, the Librarian of Congress said yesterday that it was legal to circumvent a phone’s controls to allow use of “lawfully obtained” software (COW 2) and to which service provider (COW3) you could connect.   

 Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington, released the following statement:

 “Section 1201(a)(1) of the copyright law requires that every three years I am to determine whether there are any classes of works that will be subject to exemptions from the statute’s prohibition against circumvention of technology that effectively controls access to a copyrighted work…

This is the fourth time that I have made such a determination. Today I have designated six classes of works. Persons who circumvent access controls in order to engage in non-infringing uses of works in these six classes will not be subject to the statutory prohibition against circumvention…

The six classes of works are [paraphrased for brevity]:

(1)  Short portions of motion pictures on DVDs for the purpose of criticism or comment,

(2)  Computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute lawfully obtained software applications,

(3)  Computer programs enabling wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telecommunications network,

(4)  Video games access circumvention for the sole purpose of good faith testing for, investigating, or correcting security flaws or vulnerabilities,

(5)  Computer programs protected by dongles are obsolete.

(6)  Literary works that prevent read-aloud function or text into a specialized format.

The purpose of the proceeding is to determine whether current technologies that control access to copyrighted works are diminishing the ability of individuals to use works in lawful, noninfringing ways…”

For more, visit the Library of Congress at www.loc.gov

Tags: Great Conspiracy Theories, iPhone, iPhone & AT&T

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 at 9:37 am and is filed under Apple, PAN. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.