FAIR USE Act of 2007
March 1st, 2007 by Nicholas LaRacuenteThe FAIR USE Act of 2007 is a bill that would reform the DMCA, restoring traditional fair use as one of 12 major exemptions to the DMCA and codifying the Betamax Doctrine that protects the creators of tools with significant non-infringing purposes should their tools be abused for copyright violations. This bill seems like something we have been awaiting for a long time, so I recommend that we move quickly with our support.
EFF info with link to full text.
UPDATE: One of our UPenn alumns, Bill Herman, writes in support of the FAIR USE Act of 2007, despite some reservations because it is a bit less awesome than the DMCA reform bill Boucher sponsored in 2005.
UPDATE 2: Check out the OpenCongress page for H.R. 1201.
March 7th, 2007 at 9:23 am
It’s time the RIAA stop treating people like criminals and respect their privacy. Support encrypted file exchange solutions such as GigaTribe: http://www.gigatribe.com
March 27th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
The RIAA never stops. The PERFORM Act recently before the Senate was a backdoor assault on the “fair use” doctrine, which today allows you to record radio and television shows for your own personal use and watch or listen to them at a later time. We should not assume that this is the last step that RIAA will take. If they succeed at limiting fair use on Internet radio stations, we can expect RIAA to then follow up by attempting to further limit the fair use doctrine.
Thankfully, there is some opposition in the Senate. John Sununu (R-NH) opposed the PERFORM Act last year, and this year he has introduced a competing bill, co-sponsored by Judd Gregg (R-NH). This bill would preserve the present system where individuals would be free to record their favorite music from Internet radio stations as well as terrestrial radio stations. Senator Sununu has the right idea! Internet radio is a good innovation; the Senate should treat it the same as terrestrial radio. Check out http://broadclip.blogspot.com/ for a full discussion on this topic.
The PERFORM Act is S-256. Senator Sununu’s bill, while lacking a stupid snappy acronym, is S-258. As time goes on, we will fight against the PERFORM Act.
In the meantime, we urge you to visit https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=271 to contact your Senator and your member of the House of Representatives and let them know how you stand on the PERFORM Act.