The Librarian of Congress’s “news”

There has been a lot of confusion about a recent report released by the Librarian of Congress in which it was stated:

(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.

This report has been misinterpreted by some as potentially granting new copying, performance and distribution rights to churches. This is incorrect.

Only Congress makes copyright law. This report that was filed by the Librarian of Congress is mandated by Section 1201(a)(1) of copyright law and is limited in scope to copyright protection and it does provide any new exemptions. Instead, it allows circumvention of copy protection software under some fair uses. There are no new performance or distribution rights granted by this report at all.

Short URL: http://www.copyrightcommunity.com/?p=658

Posted by CopyrightSolver on Aug 12 2010. Filed under Copyright News, Using Film & Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry