Lee Hollaar

Congressman Rick Boucher’s latest proposal to make significant changes to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) would make substantial and unwise changes to U.S. copyright law based on nonexistent problems, and would put the United States in violation of our trade treaties, all in order to relieve copyright infringers of legal liability. It’s still a bad idea.

Technologists, and particularly computer programmers, seem to fixate on unlikely scenarios while giving only lip service to the massive copyright infringement now happening. When they do look at problems, they dismiss technical solutions because they are not perfect. And they ignore how laws can support or work alongside technology, because law is unfamiliar to them. By putting problems in perspective, technologists can be particularly effective in finding approaches to the real problems in today’s digital world.

While many people in the copyright debate talk about "fair use," they seldom say which uses are of concern. But without specifics, it is hard to provide balanced exceptions to copyright protection. Congress should codify "fair use of necessity" and many instances of "economic fair use" so that people will know what is allowed, while reserving fair use primarily for the "transformative" or "productive" uses that reflect the
goal of copyright.

Many are attempting to rewrite intellectual property protections by altering the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, whether by broadening definitions of permissible conduct such as “fair use”, or by wholesale changes to current law. However, many have failed to consider the ramifications of these changes to our international agreements. Some legislative proposals would require renegotiation or complete dissolution of these trade agreements.