One of the good things about the law, however, is that it does take into account the potential for changing technology – which is why every few years there is a rulemaking session where people or organizations can submit proposals to the Copyright Office for exemptions to the law. During the last session, about a year and a half ago, the Electronic Frontier Foundation in coordination with some other groups submitted a proposal with two large initiatives: (1) to legalize “jailbreaking” your phone; and (2) to legalize ripping DVDs and other activities to circumvent copyright protection, as long as the purpose is to create a video that is found to be fair use. (Previously, even if your final product was entirely legal in that you made fair use of, say, clips from a movie, you could still be in trouble due to the anti-circumvention laws.) The Copyright Office has announced that these exemptions have been added, along with several others. Here’s a basic run-down of the six new exemptions:
This is actually really big news, especially on the phone jailbreaking front – and frankly, a big surprise. Though besides being able to (legally) mess with your phone, this can be considered a triumph on another geek front – for vidders. The Organization for Transformative Works was behind the proposal as well, championing the rights of video remixers, especially those who create music videos as works of fan culture criticism and commentary.
So though the video below may or may not be entirely legal according to U.S. copyright law (there’s some interesting arguments about fair use of the video versus the music), at least now we know that it wasn’t illegal to rip the DVDs to make it.
And some of the other vids that were actually pointed to in the proposal itself as examples of the artistic genre are available here.
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