One of our top issues we tackled in 2015 was reforming Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). To recap, Section 1201 makes it illegal to break digital locks in order to access copyrighted works (like the movie on a DVD or software in a device), even for legitimate purposes. Every three years, public interest groups spend time and money petitioning the Copyright Office to exempt certain uses and technologies from this law. The Library of Congress released the most recent decisions for this triennial process in October 2015. One example that affects many people that we have yet to touch on is vehicle use. You may not have thought about how copyright law regulates your car. However, cars are increasingly powered as much by software as they are by motors.

Today, Google announced that it would create a sort of legal defense fund for fair use YouTube videos that have received DMCA takedown notices. Under the new program, Google has selected a handful of videos as clear fair uses, despite accusations of copyright holders, and will indemnify the uploaders for up to $1 million in legal fees and possible damages if the rightsholders sued for infringement.

This post is the fourth installment of #CopyrightwithCourtney, a series from Courtney Duffy on the copyright challenges faced by artists in various disciplines. Courtney is the Robert W. Deutsch Arts & Technology Policy Fellow at Public Knowledge. This post focuses on the recent DMCA exemption decisions from the Library of Congress, and their effect on filmmakers.

As sure as the fall follows summer, and the sun rises in the east, the sixth triennial DMCA Section 1201 exemption process resulted in the rejection of our request for an exemption for creating private copies of DVDs and Blu Ray discs (DVD/BRDs). Consumers have long sought exemptions for private copying of DVDs, and more recently Blu Ray discs, for purposes ranging from Linux compatibility, to putting videos on home media servers, to making back-up copies in case discs get scratched, to watching them on devices lacking optical drives, like tablets, smartphones, and most modern laptops.

In November 2014, Public Knowledge petitioned the Copyright Office for a number of exemptions to the prohibition against circumventing technological protection measures (i.e. “digital locks”) protecting copyrighted works under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Last weekend, The Sunday Times, a UK newspaper, released a front-page article entitled “British Spies Betrayed to Russians and Chinese.” The article claimed that Russia and China accessed the classified files leaked by Edward Snowden. The article went on to state that UK intelligence agency MI6 was forced to remove agents from active operations in Moscow because of this leak.

Shortly after the recent Floyd Mayweather/Manny Pacquiao boxing match, Re/Code published an op-ed that I wrote discussing some of the copyright implications of live video apps like Periscope and Meerkat. In that article I made two points: first, that we should hit pause on a collective panic over Periscope and Meerkat signaling the latest assault on copyrighted video, in part because rightsholders can bring the powerful DMCA notice-and-takedown provisions to bear on the problem, and in part because video streaming live events does not necessarily implicate copyright law.

Earlier this year, Public Knowledge submitted comments to the Copyright Office as part of the Librarian of Congress’s triennial exemption review process, in support of three requests for exemptions to the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision:

My mother’s heart may have literally skipped a beat last week, but she waited four days to find out.

Cable and internet service provider Cox Communications was sued last week on the grounds that its customers have been torrenting music illegally. Cox is far from unique in this; it’d be hard to imagine any internet provider (including the federal government) not having some customers infringing copyrights. The reason we don’t see such suits all the time is because of the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).