Software Freedom Conservancy granted DMCA Exemptions for firmware and more @conservancy

Last week, the Software Freedom Conservancy announced that its efforts to stand up for the rights of FOSS developers had been successful and that it had been granted almost all of the exemptions that it requested in the Librarian of Congress’ recent rule making, according to the final rule Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for Access Control Technologies.

The Librarian of Congress (“LoC“) granted DMCA exemptions for installing alternate firmwares on routers and for investigating copyleft compliance, and the exemption that Software Freedom Conservancy previously applied for and received on Smart TVs was also expanded.

While the formal request to extend the security research exemption to include privacy research was not granted, the Register clarified that privacy research is indeed included in security research. The SFC executive director, Karen Sandler, also participated as an individual in a request to expand the existing exemption for medical devices which was also successful.

Read all the details in the announcement here.


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