On October 25, 2024, the Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden adopted a final rule granting exemptions to a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) provision that prohibits circumvention of technological measures that control access to copyrighted works. The new final rule went into effect October 28, 2024.

In 1998, as part of the DMCA, Congress added § 1201 to the Copyright Laws (Title 17) to provide greater legal protection for copyright owners in the then-emerging digital environment. Section 1201 generally made it unlawful to “circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to” a copyrighted work. Since then, every three years, the Librarian of Congress (US Copyright Office), upon the recommendation of the Register of Copyrights, has been authorized to adopt temporary exemptions specific to classes of copyrighted works that will be in effect for the ensuing three‐year period.

Now, pursuant to § 1201 and based upon recommendation of the Register, the Copyright Office has renewed all but one of the existing exemptions, adopted a new exemption to vehicle operational data for computer programs, and expanded the existing exemptions to text and data mining of audiovisual and literary works and exemptions regarding computer programs for repair of commercial industrial equipment.

The Copyright Office recommended adopting or expanding exemptions for the following classes:

• [For] Classes 3(a) and 3(b) [exemptions]: Expansion of the exemption for audiovisual and literary works, for the purpose of text and data mining for scholarly research and teaching by allowing researchers affiliated with other nonprofit institutions of higher education to access corpora for independent research and by modifying the provisions concerning security measures and viewing the contents of copyrighted works within a corpus.
• [For] Class 5 [exemptions]: New exemption for computer programs that control retail-level commercial food preparation equipment for purposes of diagnosis, maintenance, and repair.
• [For] Class 7 [exemptions]: New exemption for computer programs, for purposes of accessing, storing, and sharing operational data, including diagnostic and telematics data, of motorized land vehicles, marine vessels, and commercial and agricultural vehicles or vessels.

Regarding the Classes 3(a) and 3(b) exemptions, the final rule explains that institutions can “provide outside researchers with credentials for security and authentication to use a corpus that is hosted on its servers but cannot disseminate a copy of a corpus (or copyrighted works included therein) to outside researchers or give outside researchers the ability to download, make copies of, or distribute any copyrighted works.”

Regarding the Class 5 exemptions, the Register agreed that “proponents sufficiently showed . . . adverse effects on . . . proposed noninfringing uses” of computer programs “related to retail-level commercial food preparation” but otherwise declined to extend the exemption to software-enabled industrial devices.

Regarding the Class 7 exemption, the Register determined that “the prohibition on circumvention adversely affects the ability of lawful owners and lessees, or those acting on their behalf, to access, store, and share operational and telematics data, which are likely to be noninfringing.”

The Copyright Office declined to add “an exemption for the purpose of conducting ‘trustworthiness’ research on AI systems.” Proponents of the exemption argued it would enable researchers to probe artificial intelligence (AI) models for bias and discrimination. The Copyright Office disagreed, explaining that the issues raised deal primarily with third-party control of online platforms, not federal copyright law.