[OPLINLIST] FW: [District Dispatch] Librarian of Congress heeds LCA’s requests, broadens exceptions to Digital Millennium Copyright Act

Tue Jul 27 13:14:20 EDT 2010

News from the American Library Association...

Pamela J. Hickson-Stevenson, Ohio Chapter Councilor to ALA and 
Assistant Director
Akron-Summit County Public Library
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Akron, OH  44326

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-----Original Message-----
From: jterry at alawash.org [mailto:jterry at alawash.org] 
Sent: Tuesday, July 27, 2010 11:21 AM
To: district at ala.org
Subject: [District Dispatch] Librarian of Congress heeds LCA’s requests, broadens exceptions to Digital Millennium Copyright Act

FULL POST: http://bit.ly/981Nea
--
District Dispatch has posted a new item, 'Librarian of Congress heeds LCA’s
requests, broadens exceptions to Digital Millennium Copyright Act’

The following is a release issued today by the Library Copyright Alliance.

For Immediate Release:
July 27, 2010

LCA applauds Librarian of Congress for broadening exceptions to Section 1201 of
the Digital Millennium Copyright Act

The Library Copyright Alliance (LCA) applauds yesterday’s decision issued by
the Librarian of Congress to significantly broaden the exemption for the
creation of film clip compilations for classroom and educational use to all
college and university faculty, regardless of academic discipline. 

According to Section 1201 (a) (1) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DMCA), the Librarian of Congress is allowed once every three years to adopt
exceptions to the anti-circumvention provisions that place technological
protections on copyrighted works. In this latest round of exemptions, the
Librarian of Congress, acting on the Register of Copyright’s recommendations,
ruled in accordance to the requests
(http://www.librarycopyrightalliance.org/submissions/domestic/circumvention.shtml)
made by Library Copyright Alliance members – the American Library Association
(ALA), the Association of College and Research Libraries, and the Association
of Research Libraries (ARL). 

The DMCA established a provision that prohibited disabling passwords,
scrambling systems, or other technological protection measures without the
prior authorization of the rightsholder. At the same time, the DMCA also
established a mechanism to periodically check if this provision prevented users
of copyrighted works from making lawful uses of works, such as fair uses. 

As a result of yesterday’s decision on exemptions, college and university
faculty in all disciplines can lawfully circumvent the Content Scrambling
System (CSS) typically used on DVDs for teaching purposes. Prior to this
rulemaking, only faculty who taught film or media studies could exercise such
an exemption. The LCA in its comments demonstrated that the use of film clips
for educational purposes is in fact common and valuable in many disciplines. In
today’s classroom, the inclusion of media resources is standard. The new rule
also applies to university film and media students. In addition, circumvention
can be performed for the incorporation of short portions into new works for the
purpose of criticism or comment, not just the assembly of clip compilations for
in-class screening purposes. The Librarian further expanded this exemption to
documentary filmmaking and noncommercial videos. 

LCA also is gratified by the Librarian of Congress’s renewal of the exemption
to circumvent protections that block the read-aloud/screen-reader function on
e-books. 

For a full report on this and other exemptions, see the U.S. Copyright website
(http://www.copyright.gov/1201/). 

### 

The Library Copyright Alliance (LCA) consists of three major library
associations—the American Library Association, the Association of Research
Libraries, and the Association of College and Research Libraries. These three
associations collectively represent over 300,000 information professionals and
thousands of libraries of all kinds throughout the United States and Canada
http://librarycopyrightalliance.org/. 

You may view the latest post at
http://www.wo.ala.org/districtdispatch/?p=5177

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Best regards,
Jacob Roberts
jroberts at alawash.org