EFF wins enormous victory against DRM

Boing Boing posts some great news:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation drove three deep wedges into the US prohibition on breaking DRM [Digital Rights Management] today. EFF had applied to the Copyright Office to grant exemptions permitting the cracking of DRM in three cases: first, to “jailbreak” a mobile device, such as an iPhone, where DRM is used to prevent phone owners from running software of their own choosing; second, to allow video remix artists to break the DRM on DVDs in order to take short excerpts for mashups posted to YouTube and other sharing sites; finally EFF got the Copyright Office to renew its ruling that made it legal to unlock cellphones so that they can be used with any carrier.

It’s about time that Fair Use was applied with some common sense.  This ruling does not make “piracy” legal but rather frees consumers to use media and devices that they have purchased without the draconian restrictions that have been imposed by the RIAA, MPAA, etc.