DMCA Weakened - Less Teachers Now Criminals!

Buried in the interesting news that it is now legal to jailbreak your phone is even more interesting news that it is now legal to circumvent DVD copy-protection for educators in some cases.

From the recent Library of Congress (who even knew they made this decisions?!) statement the following is now legal:

(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 wording isn't quite exactly what I was looking for but it is certainly a start. I'm not a college professor and I would have liked a specific notation of "For use in multimedia presentations." but I'll take what I can get at this point.  I've always found it rather ridiculous that the simple act of pulling clips off a copy-protected DVD to put into a PowerPoint is, by letter of the law, illegal.

It is, however, fully legal to do so if the disc is not protected (many discs from discovery/history channel are not protected as they are just truly burned DVD-rs.)  I'm glad to see some movement on this. I predicted two years ago that within ten years copyright as we know it will be vastly changed. I think this is a clear first step and an admittance that the "2.0" nature of information is here and must be accepted.

Here's a link to the full story for anyone who wants to see what other previously horrible offenses are now perfectly fine.

http://www.redmondpie.com/jailbreak-unlock-iphone-officially-legal/