Every three years, the US Copyright Office reviews the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s most controversial section—the ban on circumventing DRM, even for legal uses. The Copyright Office has the authority to issue three-year exemptions to that blanket ban, carving out space for DVD-ripping film school profs, for instance, or making it legal for people to bypass DRM in order to unlock cell phones.

Tomorrow, four days of hearings begin on a new round of exemptions (read the schedule). What’s on the table? Jailbreaking your iPhone, busting the DRM on music and movies if authentication servers ever die, ripping clips from DVDs for noncommercial use, breaking digital locks on DRM schemes that “compromise the security of personal computers,” and cracking open DRM on subscription streaming video “where the provider has only made available players for a limited number of platforms,” among others.

Advocates of new exemptions are aiming high here, especially when you consider how stingy the Copyright Office has been in handing out such exemptions over the years. We spoke to three such advocates who will be testifying before the Copyright Office over the next few weeks, often while sitting right next to lawyers from Apple Computer, the DVD Copy Control Association, Time Warner, the MPAA, and others who oppose them. Given the odds against them, how are they preparing for the hearings—and do they hold out any chance of success?

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