Documentary filmmakers won an important ruling Monday, when the U.S. Copyright Office ruled that they could legally circumvent DVD copy protection in order to rip content covered under fair use.

The ruling, which provides an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, not only affects documentarians, but teachers and film students, too.

The exemption allows documentarians and other select professionals to obtain short portions of material from DVDs for non-infringing uses, even when that material is behind encryption and other digital locks.

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