DMCA defenders in enemy territory

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

DMCA defenders in enemy territory
By Lisa M. Bowman, ZDNet News, August 1, 2002
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-947729.html

Noted in digital-copyright Digest 2 Aug 2002 Issue 45

...the leader of the Consumer Electronics Association and Silicon Valley
Rep. Zoe Lofgren lamented their support of earlier Hollywood-backed bills,
including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act saying the industry had
abused them.  The DMCA was a very flawed law," CEA President Gary Shapiro
said. "We signed off on it, and it was a huge mistake."  Lofgren, who
introduced the panel, said the DMCA has had unintended consequences. She
said she signed off on the law because she was convinced it would be
applied narrowly to prevent piracy, but instead it has been used to thwart
technological development ... 

Wade Randlett, of consumer rights group DigitalConsumer.org said the
entertainment industry's efforts have criminalized behavior that used to
be legal, including letting teenagers excerpt portions of copyrighted
works for book reports.  He told the story of a friend whose daughter
wanted to compose a multimedia report for school. Because she could not
legally obtain an excerpt from a DVD, she ended up using material whose
copy control mechanisms had been cracked with a program that courts have
ruled illegal. The student, he said, "put it on a disk, took it to school,
and committed a felony."  Such examples, he said, are evidence that "there
is a war on against consumers."

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