Path to Saner Copyrights?

U.S. Copyright Office Issues New Rights. "All told, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington approved six exemptions, the most his Copyright Office has ever granted. For the first time, the office exempted groups of users. Previously, Billington took an all-or-nothing approach, making exemptions difficult to justify."

Software now often comes with locks to prevent piracy but it also prevent other (legitimate) uses. Recent laws have made it illegal to circumvent these locks, even for legitimate uses. The ruling clarified some of these cases and makes it legal to circumvent the locks in these cases:

• Film professors can copy snippets from DVDs for educational compilations
• Blind people can use software to read aloud copy-protected electronic books
• Software for obsolete machines can be archived (not sure I follow this, unless it's about emulators)
• Working around a lost or broken hardware dongle