DMCA Rules!

And I don’t mean the Digital Millenium Copyright Act like, totally rules; I mean the DMCA came out with their new rules in their every-three-years update to the ever-vague copyright law.

There are six new classes of exemption created, but one of them is of particular interest to our patrons at the MPS.  The first class:

(1)  Motion pictures on DVDs that are lawfully made and acquired and that are protected by the Content Scrambling System when circumvention is accomplished solely in order to accomplish the incorporation of short portions of motion pictures into new works for the purpose of criticism or comment, and where the person engaging in circumvention believes and has reasonable grounds for believing that circumvention is necessary to fulfill the purpose of the use in the following instances:

(i) Educational uses by college and university professors and by college and university film and media studies students;

(ii) Documentary filmmaking;

(iii) Noncommercial videos

In non-legalese, this basically means that patrons now have cover from DMCA law for taking a lawfully made and acquired (ie. commercial) DVD, and pulling clips for a transformative purpose.  Whether that purpose is for review, lampooning, or just to superimpose some kittens, the law now covers you.

This is pretty important for us at the MPS, since, previously, this ability to circumvent copyright protection was limited to students and professors of “media studies.”  Now we all have cover.

There are several other new rules, which you can read here, covering mobile devices and ebooks.  For more in-depth and definitely more qualified conversation on the topic, you should all head over to Kevin Smith’s (Duke’s Copyright Guru Scholarly Communication Officer) blog for his take on the new rules.