US universities try again on DMCA

Chronicle story. ” College groups are again asking the U.S. Copyright Office to allow scholars to bypass technological devices that restrict electronic access to copyrighted works.

In a letter to the Copyright Office, the groups say that a section of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, known as the “anti-circumvention provision,” needs to be revised to permit “fair use” of copyrighted material for research and teaching.

Researchers and scholars maintain that they must be able to bypass the access-control devices and view digital texts and images without fear of breaking the law. The groups note that academic users have long been able to view nonelectronic copyrighted material under existing fair-use provisions of copyright law.”