Exceptions Sought to Copyright Rules

["Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>]

Exceptions Sought to Copyright Rules
By Edmund Sanders, LaTimes.com, December 18, 2002

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-copy18dec18,0,5043844.story?coll=la%2D
headlines%2Dbusiness

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" A handful of library organizations, universities and digital-rights
groups plan to ask the U.S. Copyright Office today for permission to
bypass a controversial copy-protection law, but few hold out hope that the
agency will grant their request."

The American Library Assn., the Assn. of American Universities and the
Electronic Frontier Foundation are among those groups planning to file
formal requests with the Copyright Office, the agency responsible for
carving out exceptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a 1998 law
that made it illegal to circumvent digital copy-protection devices.

The deadline to submit requests is today

... the groups will argue that they need permission to bypass
copy-protection devices to make legally permissible copies of scholarly
articles, to archive materials for safekeeping and historical purposes,
and to make digital products such as DVDs able to operate on different
kinds of platforms. If that exception is not granted, the groups say they
face considerable expense buying additional copies, or must do without.

....critics say the Copyright Office, which frequently sides with authors
and content providers, went too far in requiring that those seeking an
exemption prove that the anti-circumvention law is causing actual harm.

"Our job is to show damage," said John Vaughn, executive vice president of
the Assn. of American Universities. "We haven't been able to do that, in
part because we can't afford to let the damage happen."

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