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Rh of the copyright term. Because circumventing tools are illegal, users will be incapable of accessing public domain material fenced behind TPMs. In addition, TPMs will affect the public domain by restricting or completely preventing fair dealings, privileged and fair uses. TPMs cannot make any determination of purpose that is necessary to assess whether a use is privileged or not. In the absence of that determination, copyright will be technologically enforced regardless of the fairness of the use, the operation of a copyright exception or limitation, or a private use. As per Directive 2001/29/EC, as with many other pieces of international legislation, circumventing a digital right management technology that restricts acts permitted by the law is a civil wrong and perhaps a crime. Exceptions and limitations, and in particular the limitations included in Article 6(4) of the Directive 2001/29/EC, will be of no avail to exclude infringement of the anti-circumvention provisions.

In recent years, contract law has also been deployed to commodify and appropriate information supposedly in the public domain. Contracts may be employed to restrict or prohibit uses of works that would otherwise be permitted