COPYCENSE

The Copyright Office received 74 comments in response to its notice of inquiry in this rulemaking. A significant number of these comments do not adhere to the requirements of the Office’s Notice of Inquiry. For example, a number of commenters have failed to propose a “class of works,” have proposed broad classes without factual support for such a class, have not identified a causal connection between a noninfringing use and the prohibition on circumvention, or have not identified an access control that would implicate the prohibition of circumvention. While the value of such comments to this statutory inquiry is questionable, the Copyright Office has decided to post these comments.

U.S. Copyright Office. Rulemaking on Exemptions from Prohibition on Circumvention of Technological Measures that Control Access to Copyrighted Works. Dec. 19, 2005.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

The U.S. Copyright Office is conducting a rulemaking proceeding mandated by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which provides that the Librarian of Congress may exempt certain classes of works from the prohibition against circumvention of technological measures that control access to copyrighted works. The purpose of this rulemaking proceeding is 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 measures that protect access.

The scope of this rulemaking is limited, by statute, to the examination of evidence of the adverse effects of the prohibition on circumvention of measures that protect “access” to copyrighted works.

The most persuasive comments will be comments that provide specific facts about how measures that protect access to works harm, or are likely to harm, noninfringing uses by users of copyrighted works. Commenters should clearly specify the particular noninfringing use of a work that was intended and how a technological measure that protects access to that work prevented or is likely to prevent this noninfringing use. It would also be helpful for a commenter proposing an exemption to show that this particular noninfringing use of a copyrighted “work” can not be reasonably accomplished by means of alternative authorized copies of the work available in the marketplace.

The deadline for electronic submissions is 5:00 P.M. E.S.T Thursday, Dec. 1. Commenters are strongly encouraged to submit comments well in advance of the deadline to allow sufficient time to correct any format defects and resubmit comments before the deadline.

U.S. Copyright Office. DMCA Comment Submission form.