The EFF vs. DMCA Section 1201

As the EFF's Parker Higgins wrote:

Simply put, Section 1201 means that you can be sued or even jailed if you bypass digital locks on copyrighted works—from DVDs to software in your car—even if you are doing so for an otherwise lawful reason, like security testing.;

Section 1201 is obviously a big problem for software preservation, especially when it comes to games.

Last December in Software Preservation Network I discussed both the SPN's important documents relating to the DMCA:

• Best Practices in Fair Use for Software Preservation
• A Preservationist's Guide to the DMCA Exemption for Software Preservation

Below the fold, some important news about Section 1201.

Software Preservation Network

The Software Preservation Network has two major interrelated achievements under its belt already:

• Best Practices in Fair Use for Software Preservation
• A Preservationist's Guide to the DMCA Exemption for Software Preservation

Below the fold I look at both of them.

Controlled Digital Lending

Three years ago in Emulation and Virtualization as Preservation Strategies I wrote about Controlled Digital Lending (CDL):

One idea that might be worth exploring as a way to mitigate the legal issues is lending. The Internet Archive has successfully implemented a lending system for their collection of digitized books; readers can check a book out for a limited period, and each book can be checked out to at most one reader at a time. This has not encountered much opposition from copyright holders.

A similar system for emulation would be feasible; readers would check out an emulation for a limited period, and each emulation could be checked out to at most one reader at a time. One issue would be dependencies. An archive might have, say, 10,000 emulations based on Windows 3.1. If checking out one blocked access to all 10,000 that might be too restrictive to be useful.

Now, Controlled Digital Lending by Libraries offers libraries the opportunity to:

• better understand the legal framework underpinning CDL,
• communicate their support for CDL, and
• build a community of expertise around the practice of CDL.

Below the fold, some details.

The "Grand Challenges" of Curation and Preservation

I'm preparing for a meeting next week at the MIT Library on the "Grand Challenges" of digital curation and preservation. MIT, and in particular their library and press, have a commendable tradition of openness, so I've decided to post my input rather than submit it privately. My version of the challenges is below the fold.

IPRES 2017

Kyoto Railway Museum

Much as I love Kyoto, now that I'm retired with daily grandparent duties (and no-one to subsidize my travel) I couldn't attend iPRES 2017.

I have now managed to scan both the papers, and the very useful "collaborative notes" compiled by Micky Lindlar, Joshua Ng, William Kilbride, Euan Cochrane, Jaye Weatherburn and Rachel Tropea (thanks!). Below the fold I have some notes on the papers that caught my eye.

"Privacy is dead, get over it" [updated]

I believe it was in 1999 that Scott McNealy famously said "privacy is dead, get over it". It is a whole lot deader now than it was then. A month ago in Researcher Privacy I discussed Sam Kome's CNI talk about the surveillance abilities of institutional network technology such as central wireless and access proxies. There's so much more to report on privacy that below the fold there can't be more than some suggested recent readings, as an update to my 6-month old post Open Access and Surveillance. [See a major update at the end]

The Amnesiac Civilization: Part 4

Part 2 and Part 3 of this series covered the unsatisfactory current state of Web archiving. Part 1 of this series briefly outlined the way the W3C's Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) threaten to make this state far worse. Below the fold I expand on the details of this threat.