ZDNet: Lawmaker: Legalize home CD burning

[ Thanks to Thomas Corriher for this link. ]

"Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., said he plans to introduce a bill that would eliminate the "anti-circumvention" clause of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a 1998 law that updated copyright laws for the digital era.

Intended to discourage piracy, the clause has come under increasing fire over the past year by people who say it imposes severe limits on the rights of consumers to make personal backup copies or otherwise control music they have purchased. The clause has inspired high-profile court battles and made a minor celebrity out of Dmitry Sklyarov, the Russian programmer jailed for writing a program that defeated a copy-protection measure in Adobe Systems' eBook software.

Boucher told an audience of musicians, lawyers and music industry executives at the Future of Music policy summit that his bill would modify section 1201 of the DMCA to allow consumers to defeat copy-protection measures for legitimate personal uses, but it would still outlaw circumvention efforts for piracy."

Complete Story

Related Stories:

• MSNBC: Copyrights and copywrongs (Why Thomas Jefferson Would Love Napster)(Nov 09, 2001)
• Washington Post: Jailed Under a Bad Law [Sklyarov and the DMCA](Aug 22, 2001)
• New York Times: Software Double Bind [problems with the DMCA](Aug 14, 2001)
• National Journal: Digital Dilemma(Aug 05, 2001)
• Dmitry Sklyarov: Some Followup Articles(Aug 01, 2001)
• Wired.com: Hacker Arrest Stirs Protest(Jul 19, 2001)
• TechLaw Journal: Rep. Rick Boucher of Virginia on the DMCA and Fair Use Doctrine(Mar 08, 2001)