On Slashdot.org we can read that the US Copyright Office has released an advisory report on the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) that should make things clear what is allowed and not allowed in the digital world.
It's all very hard to read, especially when English is not your native language (like me!) but I guess even the native Americans will have not much fun reading it. But if you want to know more about your right to backup and if you can use crack this is the stuff to read !
The US Copyright Office's congressionally-mandated advisory report on the effect of the DMCA is in, and at first glance it doesn't look too good. They're against undoing the definition of temporary RAM buffer copies as possibly infringing (which Jessica Litman in Digital Copyright pegged as perhaps the central dirty trick in the DMCA as it opens the door to technical access control by publishers) is turned down, so is a first sale doctrine for digitally distributed works, and the DMCA's effect on fair use is called out of scope for the report. On the other hand, they think everyone should have a backup right for media bought in digital form, like we have for software." Keep in mind that this is only looking at the DMCA's effect on the "first sale doctrine" (once a work is sold to you, the copyright holder can't stop you from re-selling it) and on the legal right to make backup copies of a computer program. |
Have fun reading these documents and let us know your conclusions
Source: Slashdot.org
