I found this on ZDNet: it shows the importance to keep uptodate and critical to the RIAA and BSA: check it out at:
David Coursey,
Executive Editor, AnchorDesk
Today, I’m asking all AnchorDesk readers to contact their members of Congress in support of an important piece of consumer-protection legislation.
Passage of the Boucher-Doolittle bill–officially called the Digital Media Consumers Rights Act (HR-107) and introduced by Reps. Rick Boucher, D-Va., and John Doolittle, R-Calif.–is vitally important to preserving what’s known as “fair use” as part of U.S. copyright law. This bill could determine what you and I are able to do with the digital content we supposedly own.
The Boucher-Doolittle bill would give consumers the right to bypass copy-protection mechanisms for certain fair-use activities. It doesn’t actually define those activities. What it does make clear is that merely creating or using software designed to crack software protection schemes would no longer be illegal.
WHY DO YOU NEED to get involved? Because some powerful forces have been doing their best to avoid federal regulation in this important area.
The bill was introduced last week (timed, I suspect, to coincide with the Consumer Electronics Show). This week–and I’m sure this is no coincidence–the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Business Software Alliance (BSA) announced an agreement to cooperate on copyright protection. It’s one of those deals where industries vow to regulate themselves in order to avoid regulation by the government–deals that I think usually work to the detriment of consumers.
To understand why the RIAA and BSA are doing this, you have to know about another bill on the Hill addressing copyright issues. A bill sponsored by Sen. Fritz Hollings, D-S.C., would have mandated that hardware manufacturers include copyright-protection technology in their products, technology that could make it hard, if not impossible, to make copies from CDs, DVDs, and other media.
The Hollings Bill is the kind of copy-protection legislation the RIAA might have supported. (As far as I know, it never did so publicly.) But the Hollings Bill failed to draw wide support anyway, so this week’s deal could just be a way for the RIAA to back away from something that never had much of a chance.
