When the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was passed into law in 1998, the Librarian of Congress was charged with the power to grant certain exemptions. The Librarian’s latest exemptions (.pdf; 310KB) were announced last week. They took effect on 28 October and will be in place for the next three years.
Under the newest Librarian of Congress exemptions:
- You’ll be able to jailbreak your smartphone, but only if it was purchased before 28 January 2012
- You’ll be prohibited from jailbreaking your tablet, regardless of when you bought it
- You’ll be able to rip a DVD in order to use an excerpt, but you’ll be prohibited from ripping the same DVD to play on your tablet