New US Copyright Exemption Allows Bypassing DRM to Repair Devices

Motherboard reports that a new exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act has been adopted by the Librarian of Congress and the US Copyright Office. It allows users to bypass DRM restrictions to maintain or repair their devices. Another special exemption was made for tractors in 2015, but this new exemption applies to any “lawfully acquired” device. Although it is now legal to bypass DRM to repair a device, you might find doing so to be difficult. For instance, recent models of the MacBook Pro and the iMac Pro are equipped with Apple’s T2 chip, which (among much else) enables a “kill switch” that could theoretically render the computer inoperable if an unauthorized repair was performed. Happily, iFixit found that it hasn’t been activated yet.

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