Next Moves in the DMCA Mexican Stand-Off

Well, that didn't take long. A couple days ago I noted that both the Obama Administration and the FCC had weighed in as being opposed to the Librarian of Congress's decision not to renew the cellphone jailbreaking exemption to the DMCA. I closed by wondering aloud who was going to move next.

Well it turns out that both Congress and the EFF have decided to take up the issue. CNET's Declan McCullagh provides a brief history and overview. (I have to wonder if he'll be allowed to continue reporting on this once CBS figures out that DMCA exemptions and changes to the law are not in their corporate interest. But I digress...)

Congress, in the personage of Senator Ron Wyden (D - Oregon), introduced a bill intended to fix some of the DMCA's problems. At the same time the EFF, startup incubator Y Combinator, the Mozilla foundation, and Reddit got together to launch FixTheDMCA.org, which is specifically focusing on repealing section 1201 of the bill - that being the anti-circumvention provisions.

As McCullagh points out, past attempts to modify 1201 have raised the full ire of the Cartel, which may be why Wyden's proposal is much more modest. Modest or not, I suspect we're going to see a lot of FUD raised around Wyden's bill.