Crunch Gear: Now legal in the U.S.: Jailbreaking your iPhone, ripping a DVD for educational purposes

[Stadium-Armory]

http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/07/26/now-legal-in-the-u-s-jailbreaking-your-iphone-ripping-a-dvd-for-educational-purposes/

Now legal in the U.S.: Jailbreaking your iPhone, ripping a DVD for educational purposes

It’s no longer illegal under the DMCA to jailbreak your iPhone or bypass a DVD’s CSS in order to obtain fair use footage for educational purposes or criticism. These are the new rules that were handed down moments ago by the U.S. Copyright Office. This is really big. Like, really big.

The office looks at copyright law every three years in order to make revisions or exemptions. The six “classes” now exempt from prosecution under the DMCA are:

1. Defeating a lawfully obtained DVD’s encryption for the sole purpose of short, fair use in an educational setting or for criticism

2. Computer programs that allow you to run lawfully obtained software on your phone that you otherwise would not be able to run aka Jailbreaking to use Google Voice on your iPhone

3. Computer programs that allow you to use your phone on a different network aka Jailbreaking to use your iPhone on T-Mobile

4. Circumventing video game encryption (DRM) for the purposes of legitimate security testing or investigation

5. Cracking computer programs protected by dongles when the dongles become obsolete or are no longer being manufactured

6. Having an ebook be read aloud (ie for the blind) even if that book has controls built into it to prevent that sort of thing.

This is easily the biggest tech news I have come across in quite some time—we’re talking years here. I’m actually going to need a few moments to digest all of this.

Seems sensible to me, but I wonder what the Pandora's box effect will be.

[TheGreatBuzz]

What does it say about me that I have no idea what most of those things are? Jailbreaking an Iphone? Dongles? DRM? I may just want to move on to another thread.

[Larry]

Just an observation, here:

As I understand it, the courts have ruled multiple times that things like software licensing agreements can be more restrictive that copyright, and still enforceable.

(Still: I'm glad to see some victories for Fair Use. I'd really like for there to be some settlements on the wars between IP owners and the pirates. And I think that some good, solid, Fair Use laws that weren't lopsided in favor of the IP industry would go a long way towards that.)

(Yeah, I'd like to see a fair, negotiated, settlement to the middle east, too.)