Hello SIGCIS,

I'm writing on behalf of the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard Law School and the Software Preservation Network (SPN) to request your help seeking an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that will expand off-site, on-line access to historical software from libraries and archives.

A key outcome of this work will be to allow researchers to run old software in a browser or emulator without the need to physically travel to the collection.

To realize this goal, the Cyberlaw Clinic is seeking stories from SIGCIS members about the value of this sort of off-site access for our research and teaching.

For more details on the proposed exemption, see this one-page explainer:

Instructions for participation are included below. I hope that you will consider sharing your stories and experiences. The potential benefit to future scholars is tremendous.

Sincerely,

Kevin Driscoll

U of Virginia

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Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic is working with the Software Preservation Network to win new copyright regulations that would expand access to software in library collections. Specifically, we are asking the Copyright Office to expand exemptions relating to §1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”). You can read more about how the DMCA affects software here and learn about the rules already in place from this explainer. 

 

We want your feedback about copyright and software access issues! In 2018, our clinic successfully petitioned for a DMCA exemption that permits DRM circumvention and access “on the premises” of archives, libraries, and museums. This year, we are trying to expand this language so that archives, libraries, and museums can also facilitate off-site access to DRM protected programs.

 

The stories and experiences of your community are critical to the success of our proposal. To this end, we need your help. Given the nature of SIGCIS members' work, we wanted to reach out to ask if you have been facing issues with off-site access to software recently and would be interested in a broader exemption.  If that is the case, we'd love to hear from you.

Our team is happy to record your story on the phone, via email -- whatever is easiest for you. If you are interested in contributing to this project via email, please reach out via email to ateitler.jd22@hlsclinics.org with responses to the below survey. We look forward to (hopefully) hearing from you soon!

 

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Experiential Survey 

Name: 

Institution (if applicable): 

Email Address: 

Software titles affected: 

Is this software still commercially available? 

How do off-site restrictions prevent or discourage preservation/teaching/research? 

How has your work been impacted by these regulations? 

Has COVID impacted your access to materials? 

Is there any additional information you would like to provide? (e.g. relevant links, screenshots, additional information about the software, other institutions you know of that have been similarly restricted, etc.)