By Jacqueline Charlesworth and Michelle Choe (July 14, 2017, 4:56 PM EDT) -- On June 30, 2017, the U.S. Copyright Office initiated the seventh triennial rulemaking proceeding under Section 1201 of the Copyright Act. Section 1201, adopted by Congress in 1998 as a part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, prohibits the circumvention of technological controls that protect copyrighted works, such as encryption and password protocols, so that copyright owners can be more secure in disseminating their works in the digital world. In enacting the statute, however, Congress recognized that in some cases, an exception to the general prohibition might be justified — for example, to allow fair use of a work; but for an exemption, the work might not be accessible for such a use. Section 1201 therefore requires the Copyright Office to conduct a rulemaking every three years to evaluate proposed exemptions to the anti-circumvention provision and recommend appropriate proposals for adoption by the Librarian of Congress. Under the statutory scheme, these regulatory exemptions last only three years unless they are renewed in a subsequent proceeding. In addition to temporary exemptions, there are also a number of permanent exemptions in the statute to allow for activities such as security research and reverse engineering....