Guest DrTom Report post Posted October 4, 2002 New House Bill Attacks DMCA October 3, 2002 By: Mark Hachman A Silicon Valley Congresswoman has attempted to shift the balance of copyright law back in favor of consumers with a new bill, introduced yesterday. On Wednesday, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) introduced the "Digital Choice and Freedom Act", which attempts to loosen the definition of "fair use" as it applies to the copyrighted works covered by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. "The Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") was enacted as an attempt to safeguard the traditional balance in the face of these new challenges," the bill states. "It gave copyright holders the ability to fight digital piracy by employing technical restrictions that prevent unlawful access and copying. In practice, however, the DMCA also endangered the rights and expectations of legitimate consumers. "Contrary to the intent of Congress, Section 1201 has been interpreted to prohibit all users – even lawful ones – from circumventing technical restrictions for any reason," it continues. "As a result, the lawful consumer cannot legally circumvent technological restrictions, even if he or she is simply trying to exercise a fair use or to utilize the work on a different digital media device." The short bill amends the U.S. Title code in three ways: first, it explicitly allows users to modify digital recording for archive purposes; second, it allows a digital work to be sold from one individual to another; and third, allows users to circumvent digital-rights-management protections in certain instances. Under the proposed bill, users could "reproduce, store, adapt or access" a legitimately-obtained copyrighted work for the purposes of archiving it or performing it, providing that performance is not public. If that user wanted to sell that work to another individual, he would be permitted to, provided that the seller destroyed all of his archival copies. Interestingly, the bill's language excludes software. "A 'digital work' is any literary (except a computer program), sound recording or musical work, or dramatic, motion picture or other audiovisual work, in whole or in part in a digital or other non-analog format," the bill states. Finally, the bill also allows consumers to circumvent copy-protection software or methods if it is "necessary" to do so to allow the user to listen to or use the copyrighted media. If the copyright holder also declines to publish the means for a legitimate user to circumvent digital-rights-management software, the bill also would allow users to publish the method to circumvent the DRM technology for legitimate uses. "All Americans enjoying digital media today should join us in recognizing Rep. Lofgren for her pro-consumer legislation," said Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics Association, in a statement reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. "Somewhere along the line, Hollywood's spin campaign managed to obscure the fact that sharing and stealing are not one in the same." --------- This is probably the best thing a Democrat has done in quite a while. The DMCA is ridiculous, unwieldy, and completely shafts honest consumers in favor of the entertainment industry that paid off Congress to get the bill passed. It's about time some legislation was proposed to restore fair use rights to the consumers. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest kkktookmybabyaway Report post Posted October 5, 2002 Ewww, siding with Zoe Lofgren. I think I'm going to have to take a shower now... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
