Library of Congress Expands Copyright Exception for Film Clips, Maintains Ebook Exception
By David Rapp Jul 27, 2010In an announcement that drew cheers from library copyright-watchers, the Library of Congress yesterday announced six exceptions to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), allowing users to get around technology restricting access to certain ebooks and film clips.
In the latter case, it broadened access to such clips, as requested by the Library Copyright Alliance, which includes the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, and the Association of College and Research Libraries. The alliance, in a press release, praised the exceptions.
DMCA background
The DMCA, passed in 1998, criminalizes the act of circumventing technology, such as copy-protection, that controls access to digital materials.
According to Section 1201(a)(1) of the copyright law, the Librarian of Congress, in conjunction with the Register of Copyrights, must hold hearings every three years to determine whether there should be exceptions to the DMCA, in order to allow for non-infringing uses of a work. Exceptions last for three years, and may be renewed.
Library concerns on film clips heard
One exception addresses the act of "jailbreaking" iPhones, and has gotten a lot of play on tech blogs. But the film clip exception was a much bigger deal for library groups, who pointed out that such clips are used broadly in higher education.
While the exception previously applied only to faculty who taught film or media studies, now faculty in any discipline can bypass copy-protection on DVDs in order to use film clips for educational purposes, or for the purposes of criticism or commentary. Moreover, it was extended to higher-ed film and media students.
The ebook exception
Regarding text-to-speech functionality for ebooks, the exception states that, in certain circumstances, circumventing technology that disables the functionality does not violate copyright.
The ebook-related exception has been renewed twice, first appearing in 2003. It reads: "Literary works distributed in ebook format when all existing ebook editions of the work (including digital text editions made available by authorized entities) contain access controls that prevent the enabling either of the book's read-aloud function or of screen readers that render the text into a specialized format."
The exception appears to mean that a consumer can circumvent disabled text-to-speech technology on a given ebook only if no ebook editions exist that allow the use of text-to-speech or specialized screen readers.
However, since a provision of the copyright law allows for the free creation of blind-accessible ebook versions of copyrighted works, the number of such inaccessible ebooks is likely very small. For example, more than 340,000 works have been converted to the DAISY talking-book format by the Internet Archive alone.
The text-to-speech functionality of ereaders, particularly Amazon Kindles, has been a source of contention in the publishing world. Last year, for example, the Authors Guild objected to the Kindle feature, as it effectively made any ebook into an audiobook, and thus could affect audiobook sales. Amazon responded by allowing publishers to disable the text-to-speech function for their ebooks.
