Fair Use Under Fire

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

Fair Use Under Fire

BY CARRIE RUSSELL, Libraryjournal.com, 8/15/2003
http://libraryjournal.reviewsnews.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA3
15183

ALA's copyright expert gives her take on the challenges digital rights
management presents for end users and librarians.

Noted in: digital-copyright Digest 20 Aug 2003 15:00:00 -0000 Issue 240

A library customer checks out a new DVD from the library only to discover
that it won't play on her Linux operating system at home. Another, who is
blind, borrows an e-book from the library and finds that his text-to-voice
software cannot "read" the product. Yet another user checks out a new
music CD but can't get it to play on his laptop. These activities are
absolutely legal, but technologies installed within equipment, tied to
content, or built into a software program, make them no longer possible.
This is digital rights management (DRM) in action.

snip

If you accept that the future is digital, then you must also accept that
the work of librarians, whose very enterprise is dependent upon fair use,
is threatened by the current DRM agenda. To ensure a vibrant digital
future, librarians must work with other stakeholders and commercial
interests to push for and develop DRM that serves patrons as well as
content owners.

snip

In other words, DRM is the mechanism by which content owners in the
digital realm enforce their business models. This is of course a very
legitimate activity for content owners and creators...

snip

So far, the usual suspects-principally the entertainment industry, the
MPAA, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)-have succeeded
in both passing and continuing to push for legislation to enforce what
many regard as draconian DRM agendas.

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