Foes of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act have a second chance to tweak a section of the controversial law.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Copyright Office began accepting comments from the public on the law's "anticircumvention" section, which limits people's ability to bypass copy-protection mechanisms. Comments are due by Dec. 18.
When enacting the DMCA in 1998, Congress ordered the Copyright Office to conduct regular reviews of one portion of the law. The Librarian of Congress, who oversees the Copyright Office, may exempt specific groups from being covered by part of the DMCA.
In October 2000, two exemptions were set: Filtering researchers could study blacklisting techniques, and obsolete copy-protection schemes could be legally bypassed. Those exemptions expire in October 2003.