Lawmaker Revs Up Fair-Use Crusade

peipas writes "Wired News has posted an interview with Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA). In it he defends his stance in support of fair use and against the DMCA and other measures sought by the entertainment industry. The interview also touches on universal broadband and the recent overturning of the broadcast flag."

Re:Priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

Universal healthcare is nonsense - most of the people NOT covered by healthcare in the US are not covered by choice: nearly all people not covered make enough money and CHOOSE not to pay for it.

Mixed up?

[Tezkah]

Skype is a file-sharing application and that's used by millions of people. (Universities) are using file sharing as a way to disseminate research papers and other legitimate items. Getting away from centralized servers and going to peer-to-peer communications all across the map means the communications are faster and much more user-friendly. I will predict that within a number of years, most of the uses of file sharing are going to be legitimate.

I think you mean Peer to Peer, not "File Sharing", which is one kind of P2P. Using Skype for internet telephony and downloading legit files from bittorrent are completely different things. The first is at risk from phone companies, the second is at risk from **AA organizations.

Re:Boucher is not our hero...

[kajoob]

It actually amuses me the extent Fair Use is misunderstood on slashdot

Yeah me too, so let me point out where you have an almost criminal misunderstanding as to what fair use is...

You do realise that 'Fair Use' rarely if ever extends to sharing copyrighted material that you dont own copyright to?

No I didn't realize that, but that may be because Fair Use rights only come into play when you don't own the copyright!! Fair Use is when you use a copyrighted work without having to ask permission from the copyright owner.

You can cite statutes all you want, but unless you know the case law behind it, you don't know what it has been interpreted to mean. For instance, did you know that the Supreme Court has held that "any individual may reproduce a copyrighted work for a 'fair use;' the copyright owner does not possess the exclusive right to such a use." SONY CORP. OF AMER. v. UNIVERSAL CITY STUDIOS, INC., 464 US 417 (1984).? I can tell that you didn't.

The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use:

Did you even read what you cited? That is a list of "EXAMPLES", and the list is not exclusive. Again, if you did any research you'd find that there is no exhaustive list for "fair uses" nor is there any bright line test for what constitutes fair use. The factor that has the most weight to ascertain whether or not a use is a fair use is "was it for commercial purposes?". That's the biggy, so if you're using it for personal use (does that include sharing? we don't know yet) then it is more likely that your use is non-infringing, but even that is not dispositive.

So basically, unless its incidental or judicial in some fashion, Fair Use has generally been found to be not applicable to the entire item, only excerpts or quotations, and rarely the whole content.

OK, you just contradicted yourself. You said previously that you can't copy an entire work without infringing, but now you say that Fair Use has only been generally (read: not entirely) applicable to copies of whole works? As I said before, there is no bright line test for what is inringing or non-infringing, but it is entirely legal to copy an entire cd under the doctrine of fair use. Will saving a television show and sending it to Aunt Sally fall under the auspices of "fair use"? I don't know because the case isn't in front of me, but I do know that you are completely off-base to that unequivocally that doing so is an abolute infringing act.

I don't mean to sound harsh, but the next time you try to slap someone down, make sure your facts are correct and that you indeed know what you are talking about.

think so?

[BitterAndDrunk]

I don't really think it's much of a role reversal for the dems . . . historically they've championed rights of the individual over rights of businesses. After all, what do you think most social programs revolve around?

Individual assistance to those who otherwise may fall through the cracks.

Plus, both parties at this point seem to bow to their corporate masters rather than champion anything based on their ethical/moral considerations.

Re:Boucher is not our hero...

[Dachannien]

Did you actually RTFA that you linked?

Part of the point of the DMCRA is to revoke the provisions of the DMCA that made it illegal to produce devices that bypassed copy protection features, as long as the uses of the content are fair (e.g., not sharing it wholesale over the Internet). Boucher wants to ensure that we can do things like time-shift television shows, skip commercials, watch it backwards or extra-fast, or keep an archival copy, not to mention all the things that libraries, journalists, and academicians in the humanities might need to do with digital media.

He doesn't want the version of the broadcast flag that the MPAA tried to ramrod through the FCC - he wants a sane version that protects digital content from being unfairly abused while still protecting our rights as consumers. Hopefully, he can extend this concept to the 5C system [dtcp.com] that is essentially Broadcast-Flag-For-Cable, for which there is currently no moderating influence, and for which the MPAA is getting their every wish.

Re:A reversal in the Democratic and Republican rol

[Dachannien]

The war of intellectual property versus fair use seems to be fairly non-partisan. Of the current federal legislators endorsed by IPac, two are Democrats and three are Republicans. The chief enemies of fair use (Ernest Hollings {retired}, Howard Berman, Orrin Hatch) also come from both sides of the aisle.

Re:A reversal in the Democratic and Republican rol

[demaria]

"I sure as hell dont remember hearing about the republican party being particularly active protecting civil rights of disenfranchised minorities during the sixties"

Civil Rights Act of 1964:
House Republicans 138-34
House Democrats 152-96
Senate Republicans: 6 against
Senate Democrats: 21 against

Voting Rights Act of 1965
Senate Democrats: 47-17
Senate Republicans: 30-2

Civil rights Act of 1968
Senate Democrats: 42-17
Senate Republicans: 29-3

Re:Priorities

[Fareq]

Or 4) he's right.

Go look it up. The average American who is uninsured makes more than $50,000/year. That is enough to buy perfectly adequate health insurance.

It is not enough income to drive a 7 series BMW, live in a large house overlooking the ocean, eat out at gourmet restaurants twice a week, send the kids to private school *and* buy health insurance, however.

You've just got to decide what's important.

Certainly you don't think I should be paying for the health insurance of those who'd rather drive a more expensive car?

Re:Boucher is not our hero...

[kajoob]

I don't want to get into a pissing contest and rebut everything you say point by point all night long because it's obvious you're not an attorney, but you said the following:

The section places NO WEIGHT on any single one of those, each is as equal when determining whether the usage is fair use or not. The fiar usage exclusions within copyright law all use language which leans toward partial redistribution and now redistribution of the entire work.

Those are indeed the factors, but like I said before, a statute is nothing by itself - you have to check your case law. There isn't any weight listed for those 4 factors you mention because you're not going to find anything like that in the statute itself, it's in the damn CASE LAW!! And courts have held over and over that the most important factor is if it's a commercial or non-commerical use. I don't have any cases in front of me and I don't feel like digging on lexis, but I'm sure somebody else here can cite some cases for me that back this up.

Not only that, but those factors CAME FIRST, before the statute. It even says that in the statute that you cited!! Have a look....

Sec. 107:
Although fair use was not mentioned in the previous copyright law, the doctrine has developed through a substantial number of court decisions over the years. This doctrine has been codified in section 107 of the copyright law.

"Codified" means that a judge made law existed (you may know this as "common law"), and then the legislature then took the rules that the judiciary made and wrote them down into a statute. The common law was written into the code, hence the term "codified". The case law is still valid though, that is why the 4 different factors have differing weights - it's in the cases.