U.S. says it's okay to hack cars and medical devices (sometimes)

The U.S. Copyright Office has given security researchers reason to hope that they'll be able to search for flaws in car systems and medical devices without the threat of legal action.

On Tuesday, the Librarian of Congress, who makes final rulings on exemptions to copyright rules, granted several exceptions to Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which prohibits the circumvention of the technological methods that are used to protect copyright works. The U.S. Copyright Office is a department of the Library of Congress.

The exemptions allow for "good-faith security research" to be performed on computer programs that run on lawfully acquired cars, tractors and other motorized land vehicles; medical devices designed to be implanted in patients and their accompanying personal monitoring systems and other devices that are designed to be used by consumers, including voting machines.

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