New exemptions to the nation's stringent digital copyright law will allow people to circumvent, without penalty, the technologies that prevent them from accessing certain types of copyright-protected materials--such as an internet filtering company's list of blocked web sites or the read-aloud feature in electronic books.

Although education advocates applaud these exemptions, most of them are disappointed the Library of Congress did not enact more widespread exemptions for fair use by educators and librarians across all categories of digital works, as proposed during a recent solicitation of public comments on the issue.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) requires the Library of Congress's Copyright Office to examine every three years whether individuals are "adversely affected" by the technologies, or "access controls," installed on copyright-protected digital works.

Normally, the DCMA prohibits people from circumventing access controls used by copyright owners to protect their works. But some limited exemptions--as defined every three years by the Copyright Office--are allowed when individuals can prove they are "adversely affected" by the access controls when trying to make "non-infringing" use of copyright-protected work.

Two old and two new exemptions--now in effect from Oct. 28, 2003 until Oct. 27, 2006--were approved by Librarian of Congress James Billington after a recent rule-making process during which 338 organizations and individuals submitted comments.

Exemptions were made for the following four classes of works:

• Lists of web sites blocked by internet filters;

• Computer software that uses malfunctioning, obsolete, or unrepairable "dongles" (exterior key-like devices that are inserted into a computer to gain access to a program);

• Computer software and games that have become obsolete and require the original hardware to access them; and

• eBooks with disabled read-aloud functions that prevent blind or visually impaired persons from accessing them.

Critics of internet filtering software had argued for a renewal of the exemption that would allow researchers to crack companies' lists of blocked web sites to evaluate these sites and expose what detractors claim is the software's propensity to "overblock" sites.

"Unless you have the ability to circumvent the technology protection measures, you don't even know what's being blocked. You need to go behind the technology to know what's blocked," said Emily Sheketoff, director of the Washington, D.C., office of the American Library Association (ALA).