The Copyright Office now has information about the new ruling up on their website. Particularly interesting is the Statement from the Librarian. The full text of the decision is available as a PDF.

Coverage of the decision is coming out fast; we’ll keep updating. Please feel free to comment with links we haven’t seen.

• EFF Wins New Legal Protections for Video Artists, Cell Phone Jailbreakers, and Unlockers at the EFF’s site;
• EFF wins enormous victory against DRM: legal to jailbreak iPhones, rip DVDs for mashup videos at BoingBoing;
• Apple loses big in DRM ruling: jailbreaks are “fair use” at Ars Technica
• Jailbreaking iPhone apps is now legal from CNN Money.com; quotes our own Rebecca Tushnet and discusses vidding particularly:
  

  The agency also granted an exemption allowing users to break DVD copyright controls to extract snippets of copyrighted movies for the purpose of incorporating them into new works, so long as the new creation is noncommercial. Known as “vidding,” such remixing is a popular hobby among fan artists, and their creations are widely available for viewing on YouTube.

The ruling doesn’t remove all of the legal murk around vidding. Creators still need to ensure that their clips meet “fair use” guidelines, and the Copyright Office specified that its exemption applies only to motion-picture snippets extracted “for the purpose of criticism or comment.”
But advocates say the decision is a big step forward. Hollywood movie studios had long held that ripping DVDs for any purpose whatsoever is a violation of the DMCA.

“This ruling is useful because it removes a tool that was able to be deployed over and above copyright law that already has fair-use safety valves,” said Rebecca Tushnet, a law professor at Georgetown University who testified in favor of the exception at a Library of Congress rulemaking hearing last year. “Now we’re back to where we should have been all along, and we can continue the conversation about what’s reasonable fair use.”

• Fair Use Victories on the DMCA from the Center for Social Media
• New DMCA Exemptions Legalize Phone Jailbreaking & DVD Ripping for Fair Use at Geeks are Sexy; this article shouts out the OTW and vidding in particular.
• OTW’s own press release
• Review Of US Digital Millennium Copyright Act Brings New Exemptions from IP Watch
• New DMCA exemption from animemusicvideo.org
• Letting Us Rip: Our New Right to Fair Use of DVDs in the Chronicle of Higher Education
• Copyright Office Rules in Favor of Fair Use and Consumer Freedom – vidders get a shout out in the Huffington Post