Yesterday The Library of Congress made several rulings that will enhance the right of those that “tinker” with hardware and software. “Home Brew” creators if you will.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, known as digital civil liberty advocates, requested the hearing that generated rulings which has defined “exceptions” to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, allows companies to lock or block digital content, Android OS, or the iPhone’s software, so that it can’t be altered by end users.
Most notably the iPhone is no longer protect by such laws, and now a user can effectively “jailbreak” their iPhone which would allow for unsigned code to installed and run on the device. This would allow the device to be used on a competing cell phone network, run software not written by Apple etc. Also, a ruling was made that will now allow a sampling(track) of music to extracted from a CD or DVD, legally, for use in remixes.
Ok, so as long as the basics of an idea can’t be stolen from you then I am ok with these few rulings. The use of music to create a “remix” seems ok in my book most of the time the artist “stealing” the beat, or track is not making any money from it anyhow. And, as far as the iPhone is concerned I think that once you bought it you can do whatever you want with it, so long as you don’t use it to interfere with someone else’s civil liberties. I for one am glad to see the relaxing of the laws surrounding copyright protection, just so long as they don’t go overboard.
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