The U.S. office in charge of creating allowed exceptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has granted researchers the right to hack the security preventing interoperability of wireless phones with other carriers' networks and to reverse engineer the digital rights management on audio CDs for security testing.

"They both come under the DMCA"

The article contains a link to an article http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/365 that says in part:

"The U.S. office in charge of creating allowed exceptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has granted researchers the right to hack the security preventing interoperability of wireless phones with other carriers' networks [...] The periodic rulings, specifically called for by Section 1201 of the DMCA, allow people to circumvent the copyright protections surrounding digital content in particular circumstances [...] By allowing users of wireless phones to circumvent security to use their phone on another carrier's network, the U.S. Copyright Office is agreeing that users are not being allowed the full legal rights to the hardware that they purchased"

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Link to this comment: http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/newsbriefs/603/2202#2202