Digital Media Consumers’ Rights Act

Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) has been at the forefront of efforts to change the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). In 2003, he introduced the Digital Media Consumers’ Rights Act of 2003, H.R. 107 and reintroduced the same bill two years later H.R. 1201with Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif). The bill would have amended the DMCA to allow individuals seeking to make fair use of movies and songs the ability to crack digital locks for non-infringing purposes. It also would have required the Federal Trade Commission to oversee a program whereby copy-protected CDs would require warning labels.

In the 110th Congress, Boucher has re-introduced a modified version of the bill, which is now called the Freedom And Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship (FAIR USE) Act of 2007. The new bill, whose bill number – (H.R. 1201) – mirrors the section of the copyright law that it aims to amend – is again co-sponsored by Doolittle. The measure would ease hurdles in legal battles between innovators and copyright holders by providing six special circumstances allowing entities like libraries and archives to circumvent digital locks. It would also limit the fines, or statutory damages, for copyright infringement.



Specifically, the bill carves out five new exemptions varying from those of the Copyright Office, in addition to allowing circumvention for educational purposes. It would also enable circumvention for the purpose of avoiding commercial or objectionable content (i.e., skipping advertisements or nudity on feature film DVDs); for transmitting a work over a home or personal network as long as it is not uploaded to the Internet; to gain access to a work in the public domain; to gain access to work for the purposes of criticism, news reporting, or research; and to allow libraries and archives to meet requirements of 17 U.S.C. 108(a)(2), or to preserve or replace a purchased copy of a work.

Related SourceWatch articles

 * Audio Home Recording Act of 1992
 * Digital copyright
 * Digital Millennium Copyright Act
 * Digital Rights Management
 * Telecommunications Act of 1996