copyright
Copyright Office opens 10th DMCA review for repair shops
Repair shops, libraries and researchers can again ask for limited exceptions to the DMCAs anti-circumvention rule. The Copyright Office set Aug. 24 for new and renewal petitions, with renewal comments due Sept. 28.
The Copyright Office is starting its 10th DMCA exemption review. The process can open narrow legal paths around access controls on copyrighted works for specific uses, including preservation, scholarship and accessibility work.
- The Copyright Office is reopening the DMCA exemption review.
- The process can authorize limited bypasses of digital access locks.
- New and renewal petitions are due Aug. 24, 2026.
- Comments on renewal requests are due Sept. 28, 2026.
- The review matters to repair, research, library and accessibility work.
Repair shops, researchers, libraries and accessibility advocates are back in a federal queue that can shape whether they can legally get around digital locks on copyrighted works. The U.S. Copyright Office is starting the tenth triennial rulemaking under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, to decide whether to recommend temporary exemptions to the ban on bypassing technological measures that control access to copyrighted works.
That does not weaken copyright itself. It asks a narrower question: whether some lawful uses are being blocked by access controls and need a limited workaround so people can keep doing work the law already recognizes.
Who benefits when the lock gives way
The office is supposed to weigh how access controls affect criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, research, preservation and access to copyrighted works. That is why the proceeding matters to people trying to repair devices, preserve media, study code or use a work in a way copyright law already allows.
A renewal petition is for an exemption that already exists and needs to be readopted as written. A new petition is for a use that does not yet have a carveout. The process draws that line carefully, because the office is not opening copyright generally. It is deciding whether a specific use deserves a temporary exception to the anti-circumvention rule.
The calendar is the gate
The first deadline is Aug. 24, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern time, when written petitions for new exemptions and renewals of current exemptions must be received. Comments in response to renewal petitions are due Sept. 28, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern time.
Those dates are the entry point to a proceeding that can determine whether the office recommends keeping an exemption, narrowing it or creating a new one for the next three-year cycle. For the people who rely on these carveouts, the difference can be practical and immediate: whether a digital lock stays a barrier, or whether the law lets them past it for a specific purpose.