On May 6-7, 2009, Martine Courant Rife, a professional writing professor at both Lansing Community College and Michigan State University, will be traveling to Washington, DC to testify at the Library of Congress US Copyright Office before the Librarian of Congress and the US Registrar of Copyrights about exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA; Section 1201[a][1] title 17, United States Code).

Every three years the US Copyright office has rulemaking proceedings in order to gather evidence about creating exemptions to the DMCA. The DMCA makes it illegal to hack into a DVD even if the purpose of that hacking is to gather clips to be used as “fair use” such as in remix writing. Specifically, the law states: “No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.”

These rulemaking proceedings have taken place three previous times. In 2006, some film professors requested an exemption and were granted that. The exemption reads as follows:

“Audiovisual works included in the educational library of a college or university’s film or media studies department, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of making compilations of portions of those works for educational use in the classroom by media studies or film professors.”

The rulemaking process includes submitting comments and responses to comments as well as requests to testify. In general, the educational community is asking for the film studies professor exemption to be expanded. In contrast, groups/companies like Time Warner and the Motion Picture Association of America do not favor such expansion. The hearings will decide this issue, and also decide whether the original film studies exemption will continue into the future.

Martine is arguing both in favor of expanding the exemption to include professional writing students and their teachers, as well as any/all non-commercial use. She’s also arguing in favor of including all DVDs, even those not owned by an institution’s library. Her request to testify can be read here (PDF).

For more information about the DMCA and the rulemaking procedures, click here. The schedule for the hearings is also available for viewing.

Martine’s research is at the intersection of intellectual property and professional writing. She has been teaching at Lansing Community College for nine years, and she recently received her PhD in Rhetoric & Writing from Michigan State University. She serves as an Affiliate Researcher for the WIDE Research Center at MSU, and is also a licensed attorney. She can be reached at martinerife@gmail.com.