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In December 2017, Authors Alliance submitted comments to the U.S. Copyright Office in support of a modified exemption to Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) for multimedia e-books. The proposed modification would broaden the application of the current exemption (which allows for lawful circumvention of digital rights management technologies in non-fiction works offering film analysis) to embrace fictional e-books and e-books on subjects other than film analysis. This would allow a more diverse group of creators, such as fanfiction authors, to access the clips they need from DVD and Blu-ray discs to make fair use of video clips in their e-books.

Responses to that initial comment were filed last month. Now, joined by the American Association of University Professors, Organization for Transformative Works, the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation, and Professor Bobette Buster, we have in turn submitted reply comments as part of the U.S. Copyright Office’s seventh triennial rulemaking process for 2018. The full text of the comment is included below.

Our comment explains that creators are interested in exercising their fair use rights by engaging in criticism and commentary in their creations, and it provides evidence that creators of content have been and will continue to be harmed absent the proposed modification to the current exemption.

Our advocacy in this area is ongoing. In 2015, as part of the sixth triennial rulemaking, Authors Alliance traveled to Washington, DC to testify in hearings before the U.S. Copyright Office. We will do so again in April of this year and will keep our readers updated on that testimony, as well as the results of the seventh triennial rulemaking.