Informant38

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is extensively known now, being perhaps the most hated Internet law since the Communications Decency Act censorship legislation. The DMCA's chilling effects have been widely publicized, and seem only to increase. One of the few parts of the DMCA which even attempts to moderate its far-reaching restrictions, is a provision which directs the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress to make an inquiry regarding adverse effects of one of the DMCA's prohibition on circumvention. If adverse effects are established, this office then has the power to "exempt certain classes of works from the prohibition against circumvention of technological measures that control access to copyrighted works."

This is a chance for an ordinary person to influence the process of policy-making, and perhaps convince the Library of Congress to grant an exemption. The author of this article (Seth Finkelstein) was one of the commenters responsible in 2000 for persuading the Library of Congress to grant one of the two exemptions determined, allowing circumvention in order to access censorware blacklists.