Three times a year the US Copyright Office reviews applications for exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This time, the office has granted 6 new exemptions, the largest number they’ve granted so far. EFF has the details on the new exemptions.

One new exemption I’d like to draw your attention to:

Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and that require the original media or hardware as a condition of access, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of preservation or archival reproduction of published digital works by a library or archive. A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.

This will help the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulation project which writes software so that you can play arcade games on a modern home computer if you have a copy of the arcade game software (for instance, playing the original Pac-Man program on your home computer with perfect sounds, graphics, and with all the interaction of an arcade machine). Unfortunately, MAME is non-free software because its license prohibits commercial distribution. MAME’s copyright holders fear that if it could be legally distributed commercially MAME would threaten the extant arcade market by allowing arcade owners to set up MAME machines which could play many arcade games; a single box that could replace many arcade units. I don’t see that as a threat but an improvement to the arcade market.

Furthermore, the free software movement is in favor of commercial distribution because commercial distributors can help grant software freedom to more people and make money in the process; money that can be put right back into making and distributing more free software. Arcade game copyright holders could distribute old game code under free software licenses rather than let old arcade machines fall into disrepair and vanish from the market.

Here’s hoping MAME’s copyright holders reconsider their license and distribute MAME as free software.

Miguel de Icaza wrote about the Novell-Microsoft deal and quoted a number of interesting points in his post for free software users.

The webcast is not available in any form free software users can play without installing something proprietary. Adobe Flash requires a proprietary plug-in (although work to fix this continues) and Windows Media requires Microsoft Windows and a proprietary program. If you can view either in a free software OS today it’s because you’ve installed proprietary software to do that job.

Quoting the Microsoft-Novell Q&A:

Under a patent cooperation agreement, Microsoft and Novell provide patent coverage for each others customers, giving customers peace of mind regarding patent issues.

Q: What does the patent agreement cover with regard to Mono and OpenOffice?

Yes, under the patent agreement, customers will receive coverage for Mono, Samba, and OpenOffice as well as .NET and Windows Server. All of these technologies will be improved upon during the five years of the agreement and there are some limits on the coverage that would be provided for future technologies added to these offerings. The collaboration framework we have put in place allows us to work on complex subjects such as this where intellectual property and innovation are important parts of the conversation.

In other words, most free software users get no coverage under this deal because they’re not Novell customers and they’re not Microsoft customers. What do the minority get here? Not much. Microsoft/Novell customers can’t spread their coverage as they spread the software. The agreement is incompatible with free software, like many other patent licenses are including Fraunhofer’s MP3 license. Microsoft and Novell are asking you to think of yourself instead of your community.

The specific mention of Mono, Samba, and OpenOffice.org tells us what programs’ functionality are in Microsoft’s sights for future patent litigation. This litigation can cover use as well as development because you are using patented algorithms merely by running patent-encumbered programs. In other words, merely by running these programs one becomes liable to lose a patent infringement lawsuit. Before you consider ditching free software, keep in mind that this is only Microsoft’s view of their patents. They can be wrong.

The “conversation” has nothing to do with “intellectual property” or “innovation” (which is often used to distract you from talking about your freedoms as a computer user). The subject at hand already has a name—software patents—and that name reminds us of previous conversations where we agree to work to abolish them.

Boing Boing has the scoop:

The Nielsen Buzzmetrics conference on “Consumer Generated Media” (e.g., blogs, Flickr streams, youtubes, Wikipedia, etc) has a blanket prohibition on any reporting or blogging. Now, there’s nothing wrong with an off-the-record conference, I’ve attended and even helped run many of them. But the usual practice is to adopt the Chatham House Rule — no reporting on stuff that the speaker declares off-the-record, and no attributing any remarks without permission of the speaker. It’s pretty ironic for a “consumer generated media” conference to prohibit the creation of “consumer generated media.”

Although I do think there’s something wrong with an off-the-record conference particularly when people are invited who report things or simply enjoy their freedom of speech. The last sentence is telling (“But there’s an interesting parallel to the standards meetings and UN treaty bodies I’ve attended on Internet [governance] — the less Internet access those meetings had, the more likely it was that the meeting had been called to destroy the Internet.”); it’s not for the speaker to decide whether they’re to be a part of “consumer generated media”, it’s for the person reporting to decide. If you don’t want your comments to be repeated, don’t tell them to people you can’t trust to keep your secret. Certainly don’t hold a conference to air them.

Some issues are too important not to share; there are reasons why the high-ranking officials in government, for instance, have closed-door meetings to discuss the fate of democracy. I recall a similar problem writ small regarding secrecy at an ostensibly “community” radio station where I used to work. A number of important Board meetings were held in closed session (I was the only person to regularly attend these meetings as an audience member and I was regularly kicked out of the closed session discussion so often nobody else at the station heard the run-up to the closed session affair). Meeting minutes had insufficient detail to put together voting records even on open session votes. This Board defended Board-elected Board members (in other words, the Board was not fully accountable to the voting members) in the worst way by saying it helped keep control over the Board. Board meetings allotted far too little time to discuss matters of significance such as why ballots in one Board election were shipped out to an unnamed accountant, why the accountant’s unobserved vote tally was being taken seriously, and where those ballots ended up afterwards. I learned that not all paying members had received ballots in that election. Policies such as these are carefully constructed to maintain the appearance of fairness and democratic oversight while delivering neither.

So even though I disagree with the take Boing Boing presents here, I find the subsequent discussion of consumerism interesting and I wonder if they’re as sensitive to the self-contradiction they pose as I’m sure you will be if you read their post.