{"id":168,"date":"2015-11-25T17:07:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-25T17:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/library\/2015\/11\/25\/hands-off\/"},"modified":"2018-07-18T21:28:18","modified_gmt":"2018-07-18T21:28:18","slug":"hands-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/library\/2015\/11\/25\/hands-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Hands Off!"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Believe it or not, decisions made by the Librarian of Congress impact your<\/i>day-to-day life.  <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

Every 3 years, the Librarian of Congress gets to decide on exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).  <\/span>The DMCA is a law passed in 2000 that harshly penalizes the circumvention of \u201ctechnological protection measures,\u201d often known as DRM, or Digital Restrictions Management.  <\/span>In other words, under the DMCA, you could face hefty fines or jail time if you jailbreak your smartphone or attempt to modify the software that powers your car.<\/span><\/div>\n
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On October 27, the Library of Congress handed down its latest list of exemptions to the DMCA.  <\/span><\/span>Among other exemptions<\/span><\/a>, owners of motor vehicles and farm equipment are now legally free to modify the software embedded in these vehicles.  <\/span>Last spring, as the Library of Congress\u2019s Copyright Office heard arguments for exemptions to the DMCA, the companies General Motors and John Deere both argued that, on some level, <\/span>car and tractor owners don\u2019t actually own the underlying software that\u2019s built into their machines<\/span><\/a>.  <\/span>The companies claim that they retain ownership of the software, simply granting a license for its use to the end user and that, as such, the \u201cowner\u201d of the vehicle is not entitled to make any changes to the software.<\/span><\/div>\n
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While we can be thankful that the latest DMCA exemptions have dealt a blow to the clouded corporate logic of GM and John Deere, the unfortunate fact remains that these exemptions only last 3 years.  <\/span>Every 3 years, everything<\/i> is up for grabs again; even past exemptions must be newly argued for!  <\/span>The Free Software Foundation points out numerous problems<\/a> with the current law.  <\/span>Hopefully Congress will act soon to reform the DMCA, a law which, in the name of protecting copyright, keeps people from being able to make full use of their own technology.<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Believe it or not, decisions made by the Librarian of Congress impact yourday-to-day life.  Every 3 years, the Librarian of Congress gets to decide on exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).  The DMCA is a law passed in Continue reading Hands Off!<\/span>→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1227,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1227"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1056,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions\/1056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}