Scripting News today, the U.S. Copyright Office has issued Rulemaking on Exemptions from Prohibition on Circumvention of Technological Measures that Control Access to Copyrighted Works. Which is the long way of saying that you can hack blocking software to figure out what it’s blocking. This rule neatly obviates many of the concerns that were noted by ACLU lawyer Chris Hansen in his excellent article in Writ Magazine, Do We Really Want a Secret Censorship System.

The question I have is about the second class of works specified in the Rule: “Literary works, including computer programs and databases, protected by access control mechanisms that fail to permit access because of malfunction, damage or obsolescence.” It’s hard for me to parse exactly what this means. But it’s interesting, and the possibilities are, to me, very positive. Anyone who still thinks the gov’t doesn’t get it is out of touch, in my opinion. As I’ve said before, the government gets it just fine (at least in the US), it’s just that things have to be worked out in terms of law and policy, which can take a while.