The German Parliament approved legislation to transform the 2001 European copyright directive into German law.
One central point of the discussion was the new Article 52a of the copyright law. This is a new fair use exception: Copying works for education or research purposes becomes legal under certain conditions spelled out in that article. Since there are many critics of this new system, there is a sun-set provision until 2006 for it.
The American embassy lobbied against this article. American science publishers have their largest foreign market in Germany, accounting for about 8 percent of sales. That lobby effort was without success, however.
The new legislation's part corresponding to the American DMCA is in the
Articles 95a and 95b. The first article is a prohibition of circumventing technological protection measures. The second one wants to balance the regulation by assuring that fair use rights are preserved. Rightholders have a duty to make available the means of benefitting from existing fair use rights. This balanced approach was already adopted in Article 6 of the directive.
Update April 14: See also this article, via fosblog.
Slashdot discussion here.
Update April 15:
Another good article on the academic and educational use question, also via fosblog.