According to an article on Ars Technica entitled, Apple loses big in DRM ruling: jailbreaks are “fair use”, the Library of Congress has added a bevy of new exceptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act altering the way we’re allowed to use much of the digital media and devices we have.

The biggest loser in all of this, of course, is Apple. For a long time, Apple claimed that the process of “jailbreaking” their iPhone was illegal. However, now it’s covered under “fair use,” and therefore can be now done legally. This should make a lot of people who jailbreak their phones really happy. The same is true for Google Android users who wish to “root” their phone legally, though Android phone manufacturers didn’t make as big a stink about it as Apple did.

Other new exemptions apply to DVD’s and ebooks. Now you can legally use portions of a film on DVD if it’s being used for documentary or non-commercial purposes, so maybe we’ll see all those “Downfall” parodies come back to YouTube. Ebooks can now also be hacked to be allowed to be read with a voice synthesizer, where before many complained this would eat into their ebook sales (which is very doubtful).

There are other little tidbits, but those above are the most notable. How long will these exemptions last? That’s something we don’t know, but for now, people should enjoy their new exemptions as much as possible.