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BlastProcessing

BlastProcessing

Knoxville, TN
OLD SKOOL

NOV 27, 2006 12:03 PM

In a move labeled by outgoing Republican lawmakers as a brazen attempt to give me an excuse to blush and timidly wave at SG's Geek Editor, The US Copyright Office has approved a half dozen geek-friendly exemptions to the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). The three-year exemptions are the result of the third in a series of proceedings mandated by the DMCA, which was passed into law despite containing language which inexplicably allows the Copyright Office to "determine whether there are particular classes of works as to which users are, or are likely to be, adversely affected in their ability to make noninfringing uses due to the prohibition on circumvention of access controls."



For details on what formats are now exempted, we're joined live on the scene by ace reporter Giant Block Quote:



1. Audiovisual works included in the educational library of a college or university's film or media studies department, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of making compilations of portions of those works for educational use in the classroom by media studies or film professors.



2. 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.



3. Computer programs protected by dongles that prevent access due to malfunction or damage and which are obsolete. A dongle shall be considered obsolete if it is no longer manufactured or if a replacement or repair is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.



4. Literary works distributed in ebook format when all existing ebook editions of the work (including digital text editions made available by authorized entities) contain access controls that prevent the enabling either of the book's read-aloud function or of screen readers that render the text into a specialized format.



5. Computer programs in the form of firmware that enable wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telephone communication network, when circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of lawfully connecting to a wireless telephone communication network.



6. Sound recordings, and audiovisual works associated with those sound recordings, distributed in compact disc format and protected by technological protection measures that control access to lawfully purchased works and create or exploit security flaws or vulnerabilities that compromise the security of personal computers, when circumvention is accomplished solely for the purpose of good faith testing, investigating, or correcting such security flaws or vulnerabilities.





Abandonware, cell phones, CDs, ebooks...even dongles. Dongles, America. DONGLES. Entire AV departments won't be safe from the rampaging hordes of piracy-maddened citizens, as long as those citizens are educators whose sole purpose in their rampages is to make a mashup video of Gregory Peck's most memorable scenes in To Kill a Mockingbird and random excerpts from the Battletoads Game Gear port.



Truly, dark times are in store for America.

StudentDriver

StudentDriver

Greenwood, IN
June 2004

NOV 28, 2006 05:01 AM

Small but needed changes. Never thought I'd see some of these come to pass. It's a shame they're only in effect for the next three years; are they just testing the waters to make sure they don't piss off corporations before making these permanent?

The wording of #2 is especially interesting-- by focusing on format, it legitimizes, say, "preserving" the contents of an NES cartridge even if the same program is available in another, current format, such as for download to the Wii. I have to wonder what comprises an "archive." Could a publicly-accessible archive of all NES ROMs be legal?

ZeoZaki

ZeoZaki

Fayetteville, NC
October 2003

NOV 28, 2006 05:04 AM

So does that mean Dreamcast games are OK to pirate since they don't make the system anymore?

AlphaX

AlphaX

Fargo, ND
November 2006

NOV 28, 2006 06:28 AM

StudentDriver said:

The wording of #2 is especially interesting-- by focusing on format, it legitimizes, say, "preserving" the contents of an NES cartridge even if the same program is available in another, current format, such as for download to the Wii. I have to wonder what comprises an "archive." Could a publicly-accessible archive of all NES ROMs be legal?



I'm no lawyer, but by the wording it seems to be perfectly legal.

chronoszero

chronoszero

San Francisco, CA
February 2005

NOV 28, 2006 07:21 AM

I bet the abandonware clause was put into effect because of compilation discs, nintendo's virtual console, and gametap. It's a great clause because the true abandonware can be saved shared and enjoyed, while the companies can go attempt to make money off the games that are still viable.

Ravnos

Ravnos

Edmonton, AB
OLD SKOOL

NOV 28, 2006 09:43 AM

ZeoZaki said:
So does that mean Dreamcast games are OK to pirate since they don't make the system anymore?



No. It means that it's OK to circumvent any copy-protection on a Dreamcast game that you own for the purpose of, say, using it with a Dreamcast emulator or writing a game engine that uses the game's original data files (think SCUMMVM). Since the console is "obsolete", you now are ok to do these things so as to access the copyrighted works that you paid for. You're still not allowed to pirate the games because that's copyright infringement.

Not that anyone really cares how many downloaded DC games you have, but it's still technically illegal. Of course, I am not a lawyer, but that's how I'm reading this. It seems to be in pretty plain English.

Menelvagor

Menelvagor

I'm lost
March 2004

NOV 28, 2006 09:50 AM

I just like saying "Dongle".

Subrosa

Subrosa

San Francisco, CA
July 2004

NOV 28, 2006 09:56 AM

What's a Dongle? I'd look it up, but I'm afraid to google it.

hadees

hadees

Austin, TX
December 2003

NOV 28, 2006 10:13 AM

Subrosa said:
What's a Dongle? I'd look it up, but I'm afraid to google it.


It is a piece of hardware you connect to a computer to authorize some software you are running on it. The most common one, I think, would be a usb memory stick with some sort of encryption key on it.

And if anyone in the United States is interested in getting more exemptions or doing away with the DMCA all together you should check out IPAC which is a Political Action Committee that promotes "preserving individual freedom through balanced information policy". They were started by some guys at the EFF since the EFF was unable to give money or support specific candidates with out loosing their nonprofit status.

malkav11

malkav11

Saint Paul, MN
July 2003

NOV 28, 2006 11:28 AM

I've always understood abandonware to mean no-longer-available DOS/Windows games, and this really doesn't seem to affect that all that much. I mean, okay, so it would probably be legal to crack programs that require the original 5.25" floppy, if there are any such, but.. other than that, the machine and the media necessary are both perfectly available.

MrStitches

MrStitches

Sag Harbor, NY
November 2003

NOV 28, 2006 01:00 PM

hadees said:

Subrosa said:
What's a Dongle? I'd look it up, but I'm afraid to google it.


It is a piece of hardware you connect to a computer to authorize some software you are running on it. The most common one, I think, would be a usb memory stick with some sort of encryption key on it.



I didn't realize they were still being used by the time USB was invented. They used to be little things that looked like parallel port plugs without cables. And yeah, dongle is way fun to say.

hadees

hadees

Austin, TX
December 2003

NOV 28, 2006 01:29 PM

MrStitches said:

hadees said:

Subrosa said:
What's a Dongle? I'd look it up, but I'm afraid to google it.


It is a piece of hardware you connect to a computer to authorize some software you are running on it. The most common one, I think, would be a usb memory stick with some sort of encryption key on it.



I didn't realize they were still being used by the time USB was invented. They used to be little things that looked like parallel port plugs without cables. And yeah, dongle is way fun to say.


Dongle is just an ambiguous term for hardware that authorizes software. Nowadays there aren't many programs that require this although I am sure there are some really expensive proprietary ones still out there. However what is more common is using using a usb stick to authorize a computer to boot up, login (so the software in that case OS), or store encryption keys used by various programs running on your OS. I personal have a laptop that requires either a usb dongle (which contains my encryption key) or a pass phrase otherwise you can't decrypt my hard drive.