14 DAY TRIAL // The US Congress is finally moving to fix some of the biggest problems with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, tackling the anti-circumvention provision of the law.
The proposed bill, supported by several Representatives, tackles the problem head-on and makes it legal to bypass DRM if the reason is not copyright infringement.
This would make unlocking phones or game consoles, ripping DVDs, or fixing your car by accessing the built-in computer legal as long as there is no copyright infringement.
Copyright and copyright law has come to dominate discussions about technology, on and offline. A law that should have nothing to do with technology is used to keep companies from innovating and keep people from using the devices or content they bought in the way they want.
Things are particularly bad in the US where the Digital Millennium Copyright Act essentially makes it illegal to bypass anti-circumvention protections.
This has been used to keep people from unlocking their phones, from running any software they want on their consoles, from making copies of a DVD they bought, and so on and so forth.
It's illegal to bypass DRM or to make tools to bypass DRM, even if the reason for bypassing that DRM is legal.
This, even as everyone can agree that DRM doesn't work and it isn't preventing people from making unauthorized copies from movies being streamed online for example.
But the true purpose of DRM, enabled by the flawed DMCA, isn't to prevent copyright infringement, but to give companies control over the devices and content you own. In that respect, it's been incredibly successful, as Google's Ian Hickson, the editor of HTML5, noted.
His comments came as several companies, including Google itself, were pushing for DRM schemes to be built into HTML.
In fact, the World Wide Web Consortium has approved plans to standardize a method of loading DRM plugins via HTML, useful for keeping users from accessing or making copies of HTML5 video and audio streams.
Of course, there's a long way from bill to actual law. While the bill enjoys the support of activists, any type of copyright law reform will be met with significant opposition from the powerful lobbying groups which have been steering the discussion and laws for decades now.