Well, it’s that time of decade again. Someone in Congress has finally—or, rather, once again—taken note of how the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions step all over consumer rights and introduced legislation to try to balance the scales. Ars Technica reports that three Democrats and a Republican, including California rep Zoe Lofgren, have introduced the Unlocking Technology Act of 2013. This act would rewrite the anti-circumvention provision to make DRM-breaking illegal only if it’s done in order to “facilitate the infringement of a copyright.” Non-infringing uses, such as ripping DVDs, unlocking cell phones, and so on, would presumably be allowed....

  By Keaton Keller A while ago, I thought that cellphone carriers were unaware that consumers could buy a phone for the contract price and then use it anywhere unrestricted. Then, after a while I learned this wasn’t the case and that carriers had every possible loophole filled in. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a bill to hinder hackers from wandering away from their device’s service provider, will now include an additional rule stating that unlocking phones will be deemed illegal. Keep in mind, people will do it and in the past we’ve seen the U.S. Government do something like this before. Jailbreaking, the act...

I mentioned yesterday that as part of the Copyright Office’s 3-year DMCA exemption hearings, the office would hear arguments on whether to permit cracking the CSS encryption on DVDs. Although it doesn’t directly have anything to do with e-books, I found this coverage by Ars Technica/Wired of the CSS issue interesting enough to bring up in a general DRM-related sense. As with the last go-round, one of the proposals was to allow filmmakers and other clip-users to decrypt DVDs so as to excerpt clips for use in films and for other fair uses. This use was authorized last time,...

Wired’s Threat Level blog has some coverage of the latest hearing in the current round of U.S. Copyright Office DMCA exemption hearings. Topics argued today included the iPhone jailbreaking exception, cracking CSS on DVDs, cracking the protections on video game consoles, Prospects look poor for cracking video game consoles (sadly for PlayStation hacker George Hotz), but good for the jailbreaking exemption. Apple, which argued last time around that jailbreaking would destroy its business model and open cell phone towers to sabotage, was nowhere to be found at this meeting after its business model turned out to remain notably...

The saga of the Megaupload viral video takedown just got weirder. Universal has responded that several of the artists portrayed in the video did not consent to appearing in it, and Techdirt reports featured artist will.i.am filed a takedown notice of his own for that reason. Megaupload insists that it has contracts for all artists and material featured in the video, so someone on one side or the other is obviously either lying or mistaken. I do wonder why those artists allowed Megaupload to film them singing its praises if they didn’t want Megaupload to use what it filmed....

This story might need to be taken with a grain of salt based on its sources, but it could have some serious implications if true. Megaupload, like Rapidshare, is a cyber-locker site where people can upload files of any kind for others to download. Many of those files are illicitly-copied commercial material, which naturally gives Hollywood, record labels, and publishers (after all, this material does include both e-books and audiobooks) conniptions. Recently, a number of music celebrities recorded a music video in support of Megaupload. This was considered a newsworthy event, and covered by a number of places, but...

It’s time for the tri-yearly circus to kick off again. Ars Technica reports that it’s just about time for the Library of Congress to consider granting exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s DRM anti-circumvention provisions. This process comes every three years, and the exemptions last only until the next exemption granting—which means that even already-granted exemptions have to be requested and argued again. The last go-round resulted in six exemptions, including allowing circumvention for incorporating clips into new works for purpose of criticism or comment, including educational purposes. (Apparently the MPAA’s suggestion that professors should just point a...

Did I just hear the DMCA’s anti-circumvention precisions creak a little? Ars Technica reports that a judge has ruled educational institutions are legally entitled to rip and stream DVDs that they have legally purchased. The case involves UCLA ripping and streaming some educational DVDs from Ambrose Video Publishing. Ambrose sued over the anti-circumvention provision violation, insisting its DVDs were sold under a licensing agreement that prohibits rebroadcast and public display. However, the UCLA insisted that fair use gave it the right to rip and stream, and that Ambrose’s catalog specifically says “All purchases by schools and libraries include...

E-publisher E-Reads and the Curtis Agency are launching a joint venture to target pirated e-books uploaded to filesharing sites such as Rapidshare, Megaupload, and so on. The venture uses a search bot to “spider” the Internet to detect unauthorized files based on author’s name. The results are collected on a search page for human users to review in order to issue takedown notices. A recent test detected 3,500 illegally-shared files on a Friday. The process of sending removal orders for them took 45 minutes, and by Monday almost all of them had been removed. The two...

A recent decision in the lawsuit against Michael Robertson’s user-uploaded-music locker MP3Tunes.com could have profound implications for the use of media in the cloud—if it stands, profoundly good ones. Music label Capitol Records sued the company for enabling piracy, and attempted to argue that it didn’t qualify for “safe harbor” under the DMCA’s copyright provisions. A judge mostly disagreed—essentially, he said that MP3Tunes was in the clear except on essentially one point. And though a number of places have been spinning that one point as a RIAA “victory”, in actuality the victories for MP3Tunes far outnumber it. That one...

Nate Hoffelder has spotted a developer offering Kindle, Nook, and Adept DRM removal tools for $30 to $35 each, or $50 for the whole set. Hoffelder notes that the Kindle removal app, which he tested, is slow and clunky and only does one book at a time. Since this is a blatant, out-in-the-open, commercial violation of the DMCA, he wonders how long this can last before the government slaps this developer down. (It appears to be based in California, with a Florida phone number, which would suggest it is vulnerable to prosecution.) Personally, I’m more annoyed that it’s a...

In February, I covered the International Sheet Music Library Project, a sort of Project Gutenberg-like e-repository for public-domain sheet music. As I mentioned at the time, music publishers are not very happy about this site, as it undercuts their lucrative business of selling printed versions of public domain music without having to pay anybody royalties. Lately, this unhappiness has come to a head with the British trade group Music Publishers Association of the UK sending a DMCA takedown notice to the ISMLP’s domain registrar, GoDaddy. Under the terms of the DMCA, GoDaddy had no choice but to disable the...