The Librarian of Congress has adopted new exemptions for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The DMCA has prohibitions against circumvention of technology measures.

The decision was part of a public process and evaluated from feedback through that. There was nearly 40,000 written comments and heard testimony from sixty-three witnesses over seven days of public hearings.

Based on all of that, the Register of Copyrights suggested exemptions for twenty-two types of uses and the Librarian adopted them in full. Yeah read the full exemptions (and some of the rejected ones) online.

The rule is effective October 28, 2015.

The decisions affect everyone and some are interesting particularly for us geeks.

One of the exemptions has to do with works distributed electronically for use with “assistive technologies for person who are blind, visually impaired or have print disabilities.” There’s some folks working on comic readers for the blind, and this absolutely impacts that cottage industry.

Also mentioned are video games whose server support has been discontinued, and issue that affects more and more video game fans out there. It’s specifically mentioned this is for “individual play by gamers” and as for preservation of the games by libraries, archives, and museums. It also extends to the console code to help in that preservation.

Overall, a victory for consumers from the draconian and abused DMCA.