EFF Wins New Legal Protections for Video Artists, Cell Phone Jailbreakers, and Unlockers

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: dewayne () warpspeed com (Dewayne Hendricks)
Date: July 26, 2010 6:50:17 PM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] EFF Wins New Legal Protections for Video Artists, Cell Phone Jailbreakers, and Unlockers

[Note:  This item comes from reader Monty Solomon.  DLH]

From: Monty Solomon <monty () roscom com>
Date: July 26, 2010 2:59:37 PM PDT
Subject: EFF Wins New Legal Protections for Video Artists, Cell Phone Jailbreakers, and Unlockers

EFF Wins New Legal Protections for Video Artists, Cell Phone Jailbreakers, and Unlockers

Rulemaking Fixes Critical DMCA Wrongs

July 26, 2010

San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) won three 
critical exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) 
anticircumvention provisions today, carving out new legal protections 
for consumers who modify their cell phones and artists who remix 
videos - people who, until now, could have been sued for their 
non-infringing or fair use activities.

"By granting all of EFF's applications, the Copyright Office and 
Librarian of Congress have taken three important steps today to 
mitigate some of the harms caused by the DMCA," said Jennifer 
Granick, EFF's Civil Liberties Director. "We are thrilled to have 
helped free jailbreakers, unlockers and vidders from this law's 
overbroad reach."

The exemptions were granted as part of a statutorily prescribed 
rulemaking process, conducted every three years to mitigate the 
danger the DMCA poses to legitimate, non-infringing uses of 
copyrighted materials. The DMCA prohibits "circumventing" digital 
rights management (DRM) and "other technical protection measures" 
used to control access to copyrighted works. While the DMCA still 
chills competition, free speech, and fair use, today's exemptions 
take unprecedented new strides towards protecting more consumers and 
artists from its extensive reach.

The first of EFF's three successful requests clarifies the legality 
of cell phone "jailbreaking" - software modifications that liberate 
iPhones and other handsets to run applications from sources other 
than those approved by the phone maker. More than a million iPhone 
owners are said to have "jailbroken" their handsets in order to 
change wireless providers or use applications obtained from sources 
other than Apple's own iTunes "App Store," and many more have 
expressed a desire to do so. But the threat of DMCA liability had 
previously endangered these customers and alternate applications 
stores.

In its reasoning in favor of EFF's jailbreaking exemption, the 
Copyright Office rejected Apple's claim that copyright law prevents 
people from installing unapproved programs on iPhones: "When one 
jailbreaks a smartphone in order to make the operating system on that 
phone interoperable with an independently created application that 
has not been approved by the maker of the smartphone or the maker of 
its operating system, the modifications that are made purely for the 
purpose of such interoperability are fair uses."

..

<https://www.eff.org/press/archives/2010/07/26>


For the full rulemaking order: <https://www.eff.org/files/filenode/dmca_2009/RM-2008-8.pdf>


For more on the DMCA rulemaking: <https://www.eff.org/issues/dmca-rulemaking>
RSS Feed: <http://www.warpspeed.com/wordpress>




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