This section of US Copyright law outlines violations of copyright-managed systems, such as bypassing digital rights management and producing a copy of a video in another format.  This makes it illegal for consumers to bypass encryption that restricts content, for instance, to one device for purposes of moving the same content to another.  The law also includes information on the Librarian of Congress’ selection of a class of bypassable works, exemption for educational institutions, and what construes technological violation of copyright encryption.

    Section 1201 also states that no outstanding violations of this section will hinder a defendant’s fair use argument.

    This section of US Copyright law is particularly salient as in order to create my project, I will be bypassing both DVD encryption codes and any DRM embedded into the music used for the piece.

    These are both clear violations of Section 1201.  However, were my project ever to come under copyright scrutiny, I would hope to find protection under this violation being carried out within an academic institution, for purposes of parody, and creating a transformative video which falls neatly under fair use exemption.

    This is also important because for the vast majority of videos on YouTube that contain copyrighted content owned by major corporations, that content has been captured from a source which implemented digital rights management, and thus the uploaders have infringed upon Section 1201.