Six new DMCA exemptions have been granted by the Copyright Office/Library of Congress to benefit certain organisations such as libraries, education, security researchers, archivists and so on, relaxing certain copy-protection circumvention restrictions. These exemptions allow the circumvention of copy protection controls for certain cases involving AV use in colleges & universities, obsolete software to allow preservation or archiving, dongle protected software where the dongle is no longer manufactured and cannot be replaced/repaired, eBooks to allow audible speech where not available otherwise, mobile phone firmware to allow lawful connection to the wireless telephone network and compact discs with security flaws for testing, investigation or correcting them.
The drawback with these DMCA exceptions as pretty much expected is that these are of very limited use for consumers. For example, it does not help allow consumers to legally back up copy protected DVDs, circumvent copy protection on content currently on sale and so on. Unfortunately, any proposed exemptions that would have actually benefited consumers were denied.
Full details about these DMCA exemptions can be read here at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
