It was an especially happy Thanksgiving for security researchers, thanks to what they have called long-overdue exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Those exemptions, which took effect Oct. 28, provide a two-year window allowing “good-faith” researchers to break into the software that controls most consumer and commercial Internet of Things (IoT) devices – those used in everything from “smart” homes to smartphones, cars, medical devices, voting machines and more – without violating copyright laws.