No more fair use?
Reps. Howard Coble of North Carolina and Howard Berman of California are about to present a bill that will pretty much gut the fair use clause of US copywright law…
Under current copyright law, Americans who record a TV program or radio segment generally may “sell or otherwise dispose of” that analog recording or digital file as they wish.
The proposed bill would end that exemption, handing copyright owners substantial new control over the distribution of their works by curtailing copying rights granted to consumers under a doctrine known as “fair use.”
“If you were to take today’s episode of ‘E.R.’ and tape it and give it to your mother, it would be copyright infringement under this bill,” said Jessica Litman, a professor at Wayne State University who specializes in copyright law.
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R. Polk Wagner, who teaches intellectual property law at the University of Pennsylvania, says the proposal has “the potential to cut back fair use rather substantially.”
“Let’s say I obtained a copyrighted work under fair use, say a photo of Mickey Mouse,” Wagner said. “If I wanted to discuss, criticize or share that work, I need to interact with other people. Yet section one of the draft bill quite clearly says I have no rights to distribute the work, which would seem to rather severely limit my use. In the digital era, interaction takes place by transferring and copying files.”
Fred von Lohmann, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, went further in his criticism.
“The Berman-Coble change would arguably make it illegal for me to swap my iPod with a friend for a week, something I recently did,” von Lohmann said. “Who knows what cool stuff might have thrived in this niche exception, but for (this proposed) change?”
Of course there is a provision in the bill that will not make Internet Broadcasters liable for “illegal” copies of music that are buffered on a users machine during playback as long as they are”licensed by an agency such as ASCAP and [have signed] an agreement with the record labels“. To which I say “big deal”. Additionally this bill does nothing to stop the greedy RIAA from forcing a retroactive royalty fee down the throats of web broacasters.
Man, I hope this thing fails before it can even get out of committee.