Copyright law exempts professors

The over six million iPhone users in the United States can celebrate new exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act — as can some Penn Professors, but for different reasons.

On July 26, the Librarian of Congress announced exemptions from laws barring access to copyrighted works, outlined in the DMCA.

The decision will now allow all professors to bypass the copy protection on clips of DVDs for use in class as well as media students for coursework. It will also excuse iPhone users who hack or “jailbreak” their phone to download third party applications blocked by Apple, according to Peter Decherney, associate professor of Cinema Studies and English at Penn.

Passed by Congress in 1998, the DMCA criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control to DVDs and digital media, which by extension made it illegal for a professor to make a copy of a clip from a DVD to show to a class even for educational purposes, Decherney explained.

The decision, which was due nine months ago, was necessary because “the DMCA was actually harming people,” said Decherney, who believes such copyright laws threaten education.

Every three years, the copyright office has a rule-making allowing people to apply for an exemption from the DMCA.

“Very few” people applied for such exemptions in 2000 and 2003, according to Decherney.

In 2006, Decherney testified in a Copyright Office hearing at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. and secured an exemption for “any media stored in the library of a film or media studies department,” according to Annenberg School of Communication website.

“I was the only person testifying in 2006 against all the lobbyists,” Decherney said.

In 2009, Decherney was glad to have more support on his side, as he and others testified against Time Warner, Inc., the Motion Picture Association of America and other lobbyist groups.

“I was intimidated at first,” Decherney admitted, but “we had a perfectly legitimate argument ... Their arguments were kind of silly.”

Decherney said he believes exemptions should be expanded even further, perhaps to elementary and secondary schools, and for material other than DVDs, such as high definition technology and encrypted streaming on the internet.

“Limiting it only to DVDs…hurts scholars and students that are working with current media,” said Decherney.

Decherney plans to begin the process to “renew and expand the exemption” in the next ruling at the end of 2011.

Kenny Goldsmith, a lecturer in Penn’s Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, has taught courses on what he calls non-creative writing and was less impressed by the ruling.

“When was the last time you ever heard of anyone who didn’t rip a CD or a DVD?” he asked.

“I think it’s actually ridiculous. This is why laws are insane. People do what they want to do regardless,” he said. “The law is ten years behind reality. It shouldn’t even need to be passed.”

Kevin Casey, of Stradley Ronon’s Intellectual Property Law firm, said about 95 percent of people infringe on copyright daily when they used the copy machine — and probably “[don’t] even know it was illegal.

Additionally, all copyright infringement is hard to police, he noted.

Case noted that while it will now be legal for a professor to circumvent the access controls to get to the content and show it to a class, it will still be illegal to infringe the copyright. For example, the professor cannot make a copy of the DVD and sell it to someone else.

“It takes away one block for those people who do want to use the content in a non-infringing way. Now you’re doing it legally instead of illegally. If anything, it gives you peace of mind.”

Six other classes of works — including video games, some computer programs and eBook —will no longer be subject to the prohibition against circumventing access controls until the next ruling in 2012, according to the United States Copyright Office website.

This article has been edited from its print version to reflect that the impacted law is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, not the Digital Media Copyright Act.

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