Thread by @doctorow

The DMCA was signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1998. It has a weird history. Its inception came from Bruce Lehmann, Microsoft's chief copyright enforcer, whom Clinton tapped to serve as his Copyright Czar. 1/

This was back in the "Information Superhighway" days, when Al Gore was holding hearings on the demilitarization and commercialization of the internet. 2/

Lehmann presented Gore with a proposal that was so utterly bonkers that it made subsequent net.lunacy ("series of tubes," etc) look reasonable by comparison.

eff.org/files/filenode… 3/

Among other things, Lehmann wanted copyright licenses for every transient copy of every work that passed through a computer or network. Like, a separate license for RAM, hard-drive cache, framebuffer, network buffer, etc etc. Gore laughed him out of the room. 4/

So Lehmann scurried off to Geneva, where he convinced the World Intellectual Property Org to put his batshittery into a global treaty, the WIPO Copyright Treaty (one half of the "Internet Treaties", along with the Phonograms and Performers Treaty). 5/

(Not for nothing that I call WIPO "the Mordor of stupid copyright policies" - they are the origin node for practically every destructive and evidence-free internet regulation in the world). 6/

That was in 1996. Then Lehmann raced back across the ocean to DC, where he - along with Clinton -- convinced Congress that now they had a UN treaty obligation to enact the policies he'd failed to convince them of back in 1995. By 1998, we had the DMCA. 7/

The DMCA is a big, gnarly hairball of a law, encompassing many provisions, notably the "notice-and-takedown" system (§512), and most significantly, the "anti-circumvention" rules (§1201). 8/

#DMCA1201 is a rule that prohibits bypassing a "technological protection measure" (AKA #DRM) that "controls access" to a copyrighted work. It's got teeth: trafficking in a "circumvention device" carries a $500,000 fine and a 5-year sentence...for a first offense. 9/

Most importantly, though: DMCA1201 doesn't tie violations to acts of copyright infringement. That means that if you own a device, and you alter it to bypass a TPM, you are violating DMCA1201 - even if no act of copyright infringement ever takes place. 10/

This wasn't an accidental omission. The entertainment industry - who paid handsomely to get DMCA1201 enacted - didn't want to ban violations of copyright law; they wanted to ban violations of their commercial plans. 11/

They had lost two important fights in the previous decades - over home taping and VCRs - and they wanted to rig the rules so they'd win their future battles. 12/

With VCRs and home taping, the movie and record industries had argued that these fair uses should be prohibited because they wanted to sell you the TV shows you recorded off cable, and cassette tape versions of the LPs you'd bought. 13/

Even though copyright law permitted those activities, they were detrimental to the shareholders' interests. 14/

They wanted DMCA 1201 to act as a "felony contempt of business model" (to quote @saurik) standard - a law that banned doing things they didn't like, rather than things Congress had passed laws against. 15/

In the early years of the DMCA, this was used as a petty grift - say, banning region-free DVD players (it's not a copyright violation to buy a DVD in India and watch it in America!). 16/

But critics of the DMCA warned that as every device got a computer in it, manufacturers would start to add DRM to their products, just enough to trigger DMCA1201. 17/

Then they could design their products so that you had to break DRM to use them in ways their shareholders didn't like. 18/

Those uses would be legal, but breaking DRM isn't, so any activity that benefited you, the owner of a product, at the expense of the manufacturer, would become a literal crime. A felony! 19/

As a sop to those critics, Congress added a fig-leaf: it instructed the Copyright Office to hold hearings every three years, where the public could petition for exemptions to DMCA1201. 20/

The Copyright Office could grant these exemptions, and then the public could break DRM without risking DMCA prosecution.

This is obviously a cumbersome and absurd process! 21/

Having to ask an administrative agency to modify your own property so you can use it in absolutely legal ways is a frankly bizarre idea.

But it gets worse. Congress gave the Copyright Office the power to grant USE exemptions to DMCA1201, but it did not grant TOOL exemptions. 22/

That is, the Copyright Office might allow you to jailbreak your Iphone, but they weren't going to let anyone give you a jailbreaking tool - even publishing instructions about how to make that tool was still banned. 23/

Hell, even publishing technical information that might HELP make those instructions (such as the nature of a defect in a DRM system) was still banned. 24/

This surreal rule started in America, but it was swiftly replicated around the world by the US Trade Rep, who arm-twisted virtually every country on Earth into adopting their own version of DMCA1201. It came to Europe in 2001, through the #EUCD, specifically Article 6. 25/

After the EUCD was passed, each EU member-state had to enact it. What's more, EU trading partners like Norway - not an EU member, but bound to abide by EU laws - had to turn EUCD into national law, too. 26/

I went to Norway for the debates on EUCD adoption, and debated the minister responsible for it.

He praised the reasonable public protections in Norway's EUCD rules. 27/

Specifically, he was very proud that Norway's law allowed visually impaired people to bypass ebook DRM so they could run ebooks through a text-to-speech engine.

But when I pressed him on this, he admitted that the Norwegian rule didn't include a tools provision. 28/

In other word, each blind person in Norway was expected to reverse-engineer any ebook DRM in their way. Each blind person would have to locate a defect in the DRM, write an exploit for it, and liberate their ebooks. 29/

A blind person who shared any of the discoveries that helped them make their jailbreaking tools - or the tools themselves - would still be in violation of the law.

As I drew him out on this, the absurdity hit home for the audience, who chucked uncomfortably. 30/

An exemption to a law that is only available if you are a master reverse-engineer is meaningless. 31/

Back to USA, circa 2021. The US Copyright Office just dropped its latest round of DMCA1201 exemptions Included in those exemptions: the right of blind people to break ebook DRM to make the books accessible to them. 32/

On its face, this exemption is a mere ornament - there's not much overlap between Americans with print-disabilities and master reverse-engineers. 33/

The reality is a little gnarlier, because ALL DRM has been broken and a little diligent searching will turn up jailbreaking tools for ALL ebook locks, from Kindle to Adobe and beyond. 34/

If you are blind, this exemption allows you to download and use these tools without risking legal sanction - though the person who supplied you with the tool can still go to prison for 5 years for letting you download it. 35/

So the volunteers and nonprofit employees who worked their guts out to get this exemption passed weren't wasting their time. They did something good and just and important and deserve to feel proud of themselves. 36/

And they deserve our sympathy, because the Copyright Office managed to kick them in the teeth even as it grudgingly granted this exemption. As @dlberes writes for @wired, the Copyright Office denied a petition to make the exemption permanent.

wired.com/story/ebooks-d… 37/

That means that, every three years, these same volunteers and staffers will have to use their precious time to fight for this commonsense exemption. 38/

More importantly, it means they won't be able to use that time to produce cogent, evidence-based cases for MORE exemptions to benefit people with disabilities, including print-disabled people who aren't blind. 39/

Ebook DRM isn't just a problem for visual impairments - people with dyslexia, people who are paralyzed or missing limbs or have coordination and muscular impairments can call struggle with the arbitrary limitations of DRM. 40/

The triennial exemption hearings are frustrating for all concerned. Many Library of Congress/Copyright Office staffers (even lawyers!) have privately expressed their outrage over the statutory limitations of the triennials to me. 41/

Congress should fix this idiotic, symbolic kabuki and replace it with a better system.

They could start by issuing a blanket exemption for ALL circumvention that doesn't result in a copyright infringement, and for all the tools needed to effect those circumventions. 42/

If you buy a gadget, you should be able to decide how it works, and you should be able to ask other people to help you make it do what you want. You bought it, it's yours. Period. 43/

That point was made in a submission to the Copyright Office by the leaders of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. The letter tells the Copyright Office that it has a duty to authorize tools as well as uses.

cdn.loc.gov/copyright/1201… 44/

"NTIA recommends expansion...to include circumvention of TPMs for the diagnosis, maintenance, and repair of all software-enabled devices...for lawful modification that is necessary for a repair or maintenance, and for modifications...regarding the functionality of a device... 45/

"NTIA also recommends that the Librarian specify that the exemption permits these activities to be carried out with the assistance of third parties." 46/

Writing for @motherboard, @mjgault gets to the heart of the matter: "TPMs have become so ubiquitous that device manufacturers are building a future where no one can do any kind of basic repair of their own stuff without violating the law.'

vice.com/en/article/5dg… 47/

As you can see, the #RightToRepair is a wedge issue on DRM-breaking. Existing R2R proposals have tried to avoid getting mired in DMCA debates by requiring manufacturers to provide independent repair techs with tools to remove DRM without circumventing it. 48/

But with R2R on Biden's agenda and with orders likely to come down from the FTC and other agencies, the DMCA is finally in R2R's crosshairs. 49/

It's fine for manufacturers to be required to provide technical know-how to independent technicians, but technicians should have to rely on this. They should be able to make, share and sell their own tools. 50/

Ironically, R2R is one of the few areas where Copyright Office exemptions can (sometimes) make a real difference. 51/

The Copyright Office can grant an exemption allowing circumvention for the purposes of building a diagnostic tool (say, by jailbreaking the encrypted diagnostic codes that a car's computers generate). 52/

When that happens, a diagnostic tool maker can reverse-engineer a car, figure out how to interpret its diagnostic messages, and then sell a new tool that does that interpretation, without having to circumvent. 53/

Since that new tool isn't a "circumvention device" it is legal to make and sell.

The triennial Copyright Office hearings aren't a waste of time. They can produce tangible benefits. 54/

They can also produce intangible benefits: an evidentiary record in which a federal agency admits that Congress's law is getting in the way of legit activity. 55/

But it's important that we remember that while the Copyright Office can DOCUMENT problems with the law, the exemptions process gives them almost no leeway to FIX those problems. That's something only Congress or the courts can do. 56/

When we win an exemption, the victory is in the form of another piece of official evidence to throw at Congress - it's not (much of) a victory for the people whose problems gave rise to the exemptions.

Without reform, this problem will only get worse. 57/

My 2019 novella "Unauthorized Bread" is an only lightly fictionalized account of how these rules can end up touching every part of your life, from your dishwasher and toaster to your immigration status:

arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01… 58/

ETA - If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2021/10/28/cli…