Follow the DMCA Boinging ball, not quite to Australia
http://lwn.net/Articles/154546/
Apply now for DMCA exceptions - Yhe Digital Millennium Copyright Act includes a provision allowing the Library of Congress to exempt certain activities from the anti-circumvention clause ... See also Seth Finkelstein's guide on writing DMCA exemption requests.
Not directly connected, but on the same topic, it turns out that Australia had a somewhat similar exemption requests for comments
On 19 July 2005 the Attorney-General, The Hon Philip Ruddock MP, asked the Committee to inquire into and report on technological protection measures (TPM) exceptions.
The Committee invites interested persons and organisations to make submissions addressing the terms of reference by 7 October 2005 if possible.
Per "export" of the DMCA from the US to Australia:
Chapter 17 of the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement deals with intellectual property rights. Article 17.4 stipulates the parties' obligations in relation to copyright.
Article 17.4.7 requires the Parties to create a liability scheme for certain activities relating to the circumvention of 'effective technological measures'. The Parties may introduce exceptions in the liability scheme as specified in Article 17.4.7(e)(i) to (vii) or pursuant to Article 17.4.7(e)(viii).
Deja Vu. In a bad way.
By Seth Finkelstein | posted in dmca | on October 06, 2005 11:54 PM (Infothought permalink)
From Australia, let us see:
draconian anti-terror laws - check, you can go to prison for reporting that someone has been arrested under them
privacy safeguards - not in this land
abuses of government funds and processes - outrageous use of gov funds to advertise essentially party political info (http://actu.asn.au/work_rights/ vs https://www.workchoices.gov.au/, Freedom of Information legislation emasculated in practice if not in legislation. Search for Children Overboard and see how much the truth means to the current government.
subservience to foreign powers - I think Australia's foreign policy was one of the first things the current gov outsourced (to the US).
Are they sorry? Try John Howard and sorry.
As we all know only terrorists and pirates modify computer consoles, so obviously it should be illegal. Coming next, all hard disks loaded with Windows and the files marked with read-only flags. Overwriting them with linux would then be illegal under what they are proposing, with "Trusted Computing" this would actually be straight-forward if not trivial.