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The Librarian of Congress's new rule, which appears on www.librarian.gov

Feb. 16, 2019 by Carolyn Mueller

The Librarian of Congress's new rule, which appears on www.librarian.gov , lists two exceptions. First, the law allows retailers to provide the librarian with access to information about their products. This means they could, for example, provide the librarian with access to a list of products that have been pre-loaded with certain DRM. These sales information could be used to provide a way for a consumer to bypass DRM, and to gain access to certain DRM if a retailer doesn't provide access. Second, www.librarian.gov notes that DRM is used to "help prevent a user from copying or repurposing content or products." So if someone wants to create a book that he's really interested in, that's not supposed to be illegal, but the law might prohibit that use. The Librarian of Congress says the rules also allow retailers to make use of information they've already made available.

If the Librarian of Congress gets it right, this new rule will be even more draconian than it already is. While companies like Google and iTunes could keep selling free copies of their DRM-protected products, the Librarian could get away with simply giving the manufacturer the option of making that sale. Google and Amazon can offer up similar DRM-free versions to consumers, but they won't always want to. That's because they don't want to have to pay for a product they're not interested in.

In other words, there's no legal recourse for piracy when a digital rights manager decides to create a DRM-protected file. Instead, the Librarian can decide whether to enforce its own rules, or to allow companies to modify the rules.

That's not the end of the Librarian's agenda. She wants to see a system that removes the need for intermediaries to use the laws to circumvent them: www.librarian.gov notes that the DMCA is already set to expire. And if she gets it right, it could be even more dangerous than DRM.

This post originally appeared at www.pbs.org/webarchive/2007/7/7/015020.html .The US military has launched a new anti-piracy program, "The New Cyber Threat," which is targeting US companies that offer services that the government believes are "not in the national interest," as Defense Department officials said on Monday.

The Defense Department's National Security Division's Cyber Division announced that its cyber capabilities have been expanded over the past three weeks, in part to