The Internet Archive has a special legal DMCA exemption that companies want removed because they want money. They have this exemption for a reason, but they shouldn’t have to have one in this day and age where kids get polio in Gaza in 2024. What kind of hell is this… My grandparents mess shouldn’t me mine.
Eligible libraries, archives, and museums have a few exemptions to the DMCA’s anti-circumvention clauses that aren’t available to ordinary citizens, but these aren’t unique to the Internet Archive. For example:
Literary works, excluding computer programs and compilations that were compiled specifically for text and data mining purposes, distributed electronically where:
(A) The circumvention is undertaken by a researcher affiliated with a nonprofit institution of higher education, or by a student or information technology staff member of the institution at the direction of such researcher, solely to deploy text and data mining techniques on a corpus of literary works for the purpose of scholarly research and teaching;
(B) The copy of each literary work is lawfully acquired and owned by the institution, or licensed to the institution without a time limitation on access;
(D) The institution uses effective security measures to prevent further dissemination or downloading of literary works in the corpus, and to limit access to only the persons identified in paragraph (b)(5)(i)(A) of this section or to researchers or to researchers affiliated with other institutions of higher education solely for purposes of collaboration or replication of the research.
This exemption doesn’t allow them to publish the content, though, nor would it provide them immunity to takedown requests, if it did.
These exemptions change every three years and previously granted exemptions have to be renewed. The next cycle begins in October and they started accepting comments on renewals + proposals for expanded or new exemptions in April, so that’s why we’re hearing about companies lobbying against them now.
The Internet Archive has a special legal DMCA exemption that companies want removed because they want money. They have this exemption for a reason, but they shouldn’t have to have one in this day and age where kids get polio in Gaza in 2024. What kind of hell is this… My grandparents mess shouldn’t me mine.
Eligible libraries, archives, and museums have a few exemptions to the DMCA’s anti-circumvention clauses that aren’t available to ordinary citizens, but these aren’t unique to the Internet Archive. For example:
This exemption doesn’t allow them to publish the content, though, nor would it provide them immunity to takedown requests, if it did.
These exemptions change every three years and previously granted exemptions have to be renewed. The next cycle begins in October and they started accepting comments on renewals + proposals for expanded or new exemptions in April, so that’s why we’re hearing about companies lobbying against them now.