The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) won three critical exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) anticircumvention provisions today, carving out new legal protections for consumers who modify their cell phones and artists who remix videos — people who, until now, could have been sued for their non-infringing or fair use activities.

The first of EFF’s three successful requests clarifies the legality of cell phone “jailbreaking” — software modifications that liberate iPhones and other handsets to run applications from sources other than those approved by the phone maker. More than a million iPhone owners are said to have “jailbroken” their handsets in order to change wireless providers or use applications obtained from sources other than Apple’s own iTunes “App Store,” and many more have expressed a desire to do so. But the threat of DMCA liability had previously endangered these customers and alternate applications stores.

On EFF’s request, the Librarian of Congress renewed a 2006 rule exempting cell phone unlocking so handsets can be used with other telecommunications carriers. Cell phone unlockers have been successfully sued under the DMCA, even though there is no copyright infringement involved in the unlocking.

EFF also won a groundbreaking new protection for video remix artists currently thriving on Internet sites like YouTube. The new rule holds that amateur creators do not violate the DMCA when they use short excerpts from DVDs in order to create new, noncommercial works for purposes of criticism or comment if they believe that circumvention is necessary to fulfill that purpose. Hollywood has historically taken the view that “ripping” DVDs is always a violation of the DMCA, no matter the purpose.

(note: this still does not give us back our VHS-era right to back up movies)
More information from Crooks & Liars

Three additional rights were also restored: the right to break copy protection when needed to test videogames for security flaws, old or obsolete “software dongles”, and (if no commercial solution exists) to make e-book readers more accessible to the disabled.

In addition to cleaning up the non-compliant XHTML and non-compliant CSS code, I added compliance with US Section 508 and WCAG 1.0 Priority 1 for disabled Web surfers. The thing last night was that I attempted Priority 2, but it would have required major changes to the way I write, so I wound up giving up towards the end. Changes to my writing style were even required for Priority 2 & 3! I will comply whenever feasible – you can check Cynthia Says for more information. (That last sentence actually violated Priority 2.)

I know it’s stupid for somebody’s personal blog but then again this blog, the calculator software, and other parts of the page are strictly a hobby. I do want visitors but took the ads down a long time ago, since they were no longer profitable enough to be worth the drawbacks.

I’m thinking about content ratings. I’d definitely give the site the equivalent of a “PG-13″ or “TV-14 DL” rating. The only problem is that kids who want to download the calculator games, even those who are over age 13, might run into problems with parents not understanding or being overprotective just because something came up on the screen. I already add “nsfw” as a tag to posts with those ratings.

I’ll also be looking for other fun stuff to comply with. Later!