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LC ruling on Digital Millenium Copyright Act



Big news on the copyright front.  The Librarian of Congress has announced a decision on "Digital
Millenium Copyright Act (DCMA)."

http://www.loc.gov/copyright/1201/anticirc.html

There are many critics of this decision.  For an opposing view, see
http://www.ala.org/washoff/alawon/alwn9085.html
(Thanks to Susan Fox for bringing this to my attention.)

Probably the most contested part of the DCMA is the anticircumvention provision, which prevents
reverse engineering and other types of software manipulation that can be very important for electronic
records preservation.  The DCMA states:

"No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work
protected under this title."

Taken broadly, this could be a pretty scary statement.  Couldn't you say that every component of
hardware and software that's necessary for reading a file "effectively controls access" to it?

One positive point is that, for the next three years, their rules will exclude from DCMA's
anticurcumvention provision:

"2. Literary works, including computer programs and databases, protected by access control mechanisms
that fail to permit access because of malfunction, damage or obsoleteness."

I'm a big fan of that final word.  As long as both personal writings and institutional records are
included within the definition of "literary works," this could provide three years of breathing room
for our preservation efforts.

These intellectual property issues will become increasingly important, particularly with records that
must be retained longer than the active life of their supporting software or hardware.

=======================================================
 Cal Lee                            calz@umich.edu
 University of Michigan
 School of Information
 Phone: 734-647-0505
 http://www-personal.si.umich.edu/~calz/
 "Those who forget the past are condemned to reload it."
                        - Nick Montfort, July 2000

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