Copyright Office Issues Unusual Rule
Copyright Office Issues Unusual Rule

By CARL S. KAPLAN

t's not every day that the federal government gives its blessing to
hacking. But that's what happened last week when the U.S.
Copyright Office issued a special rule clarifying a new federal law
that governs copyright in the digital age.

In a nutshell, the Copyright Office said that the new law, the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, permits people in certain
circumstances to break through the technological barriers that
safeguard lists of blocked Web sites maintained by many types of
filtering software.

This means that critics of filtering software are free under the new law
to hack their way past encryption schemes to get their hands on the
so-called blacklist of banned sites. The loophole for censorware
hackers is designed to further the public debate about the use and
value of blocking software, according to the Copyright Office