An anonymous reader tips us to a Washington Post blogger's note that Representatives Boucher (D-VA) and Dolittle (R-CA) today introduced the FAIR USE Act to update the DMCA to "make it easier for digital media consumers to use the content they buy." Boucher's statement on the bill says, "The Digital Millennium Copyright Act dramatically tilted the copyright balance toward complete copyright protection at the expense of the public's right to fair use..." The Post failed to note the history. Boucher has been introducing this bill for years; here are attempts from 2002 and 2003. The chances may be better in this Congress. And reader Rolling maul writes in to note Ars's disappointment with the bill for leaving the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions intact: "Yet again, the bill does not appear to deliver on what most observers want: clear protection for making personal use copies of encrypted materials. There is no allowance for consumers to make backups of DVDs, to strip encryption from music purchased online so that it can be played anywhere, or to generally do any of the things that the DMCA has made illegal."

nadamsieee refers us to a piece up at Wired on the fallout from Microsoft's recent courtroom loss to Alcatel-Lucent over MP3 patents. From the article: "Alcatel-Lucent isn't the only winner in a federal jury's $1.52 billion patent infringement award against Microsoft this week. Other beneficiaries are the many rivals to the MP3 audio-compression format... Now, with a cloud over the de facto industry standard, companies that rely on MP3 may finally have sufficient motivation to move on. And that raises some tantalizing possibilities, including a real long shot: Open-source, royalty-free formats win."