Proposed changes to DMCA

["Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>]

See Wired:
Rep: Give Fair Use a Fair Shake

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45548,00.html
12:55 p.m. July 25, 2001 PDT

"It's a broad overreach to have a person arrested under the federal
criminal laws simply because they made software that circumvents a
technological measure," Boucher said. Boucher said his office will draft a
bill to be introduced later this year.

The criminal law in question is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act,
which was obscure enough when Congress enacted it in 1998, but has emerged
as one of the most important and far-reaching technology regulations.
Sklyarov is charged with trafficking in a program to bypass Adobe's copy
protection for e-books, a federal felony under the DMCA.

And more recently:
WIRED
Another DMCA Attack Looms
By Declan McCullagh

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,52298,00.html
2:00 a.m. May 4, 2002 PDT

Boucher, a Virginia Democrat, said last July that he wanted to amend the
DMCA to permit certain "fair uses" of digital content, such as backing up
an audio CD by bypassing copy protection technology.

In an interview on Thursday, Boucher said he now has sufficient support --
from the tech industry, librarians, and Internet activists -- to feel
comfortable introducing his bill "in the next month."

"If I had introduced it six months ago, you wouldn't have seen this kind
of support," said Boucher.

As soon as it's introduced, Boucher's proposal seems certain to be
targeted for defeat by content lobbyists including Hollywood, the
recording industry and the publishing industry.

Boucher plans to rewrite section 1201 of the DMCA, which says, "No person
shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access
to a work protected under this title."

It doesn't require that the person bypassing the scheme is doing it to
infringe on someone's copyright. Boucher believes that people should be
allowed to circumvent technological protection for research, criticism or
fair use purposes, such as reading an encrypted e-book on another
computer.
--end--