Here is some testimony given May 12 during the DMCA hearings. It's from of all people, a former Congressman, who just happens to be a former broadcaster and an admitted audio recording hobbyist. Testifying as a private citizen, he gives his thoughts on the current legal situation and his feelings about H.R. 107, The Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act of 2003. Here is a snippet:
I respect our copyright laws. I do not believe that anyone should be allowed to use copyrighted material for profit without appropriate permission, license and payment. I think the industry is right to protect itself against piracy. But, one of the things I noticed serving in Congress on this Committee is that some people have a remarkable ability to carry a good idea to a bad extreme. Look at the history of the recording industries. They have always distrusted new technology. If Hollywood had been given its way the video tapes and DVDs, from which they now make a great percentage of their profits, would have been smothered in their bassinettes. This Committee reported out a perfectly absurd bill that - the industry claimed - was essential to prevent the Digital Audio Tape (DAT) machines from destroying the recording industry. Now you can hardly find a DAT machine - except for commercial purposes. [break in testimony] When I buy a CD or a DVD, that content should be wholly mine to do with as I please as long as I am in no way selling its contents or profiting from it. As for equipment: I recently bought a dual CD burner that was touted as making a copy in a quarter of real time - in 15 minutes instead of one hour. I installed it and tried to make a quick copy of one of the CDs I had produced. It wouldn't do it. Calling the company to ask what I was doing wrong, I was told that I was doing nothing wrong. Under the law, they could not let me fast-duplicate anything except an original recording. Someone had just put their hand in my pocket and taken some money from me -- all in the name of protecting themselves from theft. |
Damn, that guy ought to be a CD Freak! This testimony shows a trend of growing support and a renewed push for so called 'Fair Use" legislation. Hopefully, this could lead to a modification of the present DMCA in effect since 1998, that makes it a criminal act to bypass copy protection schemes. In fact, it is almost starting to appear that a balanced reform bill is possible.
Newly appointed House Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton, R-Texas, is backing legislation that would seek to amend copyright law to allow educators, librarians, and other consumers to make copies of digital content for fair-use purposes. H.R. 107, the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act, was introduced in January 2003, but it never left committee until newly appointed Barton called a hearing May 12 to push the bill forward. Obviously, this is good news for us the consumer, as what we have now is unacceptable. No where to go but up, so to speak.
"We went way overboard as a Congress in enacting that [1998] legislation," Rep. John Doolittle, R-Calif., one of the authors of H.R. 107, said at the May 12 hearing before the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on consumer protection. "This bill represents the first tangible opportunity to redress those wrongs."
Take a minute, read what the honorable Allen Swift had to say about the legal nonsense we all have had to put up with, along with the negative impact unbalanced legislation can cause. It is critical to let your Government representitive know how you feel on this issue. 321 studios, distributors of DVD and game backup software, makes it easy to drop them a line. It is important to do this, as we all know that what happens here in the US, soon travels abroad to wreak havok on our neighbors rights. Maybe we can help to stop it right here. Americans can expect to hear more on this subject from legislators later in the year.
Source: The Committee on Energy and Congress
