New Exemption for Educational Use of Copy-Protected Material

A web article from NPR on “jailbreaking” cellphones includes the following info of interest to those using videos in class presentations:





From: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128773367&ft=1&f=1001

“…According to new government rules announced Monday, (there will be)… new exemptions from a 1998 federal law that prohibits people from bypassing technical measures that companies put on their products to prevent unauthorized uses. The Library of Congress, which oversees the Copyright Office, reviews and authorizes exemptions every three years to ensure that the law does not prevent certain non-infringing use of copyright-protected material. (Among the exemptions is one to)… allow college professors, film students and documentary filmmakers to break copy-protection measures on DVDs so they can embed clips for educational purposes, criticism, commentary and noncommercial videos.”

Note: The news release from the Library of Congress is available at:

http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2010/10-169.html

July 26, 2010
Librarian of Congress Announces DMCA Section 1201 Rules for Exemptions Regarding Circumvention of Access-Control Technologies

UPDATE: From a report on the exemption from Inside Higher Ed 7-27-10: Tracy Mitrano, director of I.T. policy at Cornell University and a technology law blogger for Inside Higher Ed, called the decision "very big news," and "good news," for higher education, noting that advocates in academe have been lobbying for an expansion of fair use exemptions for some time. One campus that might take heart is the University of California at Los Angeles, which an educational media group threatened to sue last spring for copying and streaming DVD content on course websites. The university had refused to stop the practice, and a UCLA spokesman said the group, the Association for Information and Media Equipment, has not followed through. He said UCLA is reviewing the new rules.