Abolish Copyright

EFF:: "The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has been wreaking havoc on consumers' fair use rights for the past seven years. Now Congress is considering the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act (DMCRA, HR 1201), a bill that would reform part of the DMCA and formally protect the 'Betamax defense' relied on by so many innovators.

HR 1201 would give citizens the right to circumvent copy-protection measures as long as what they're doing is otherwise legal. For example, it would make sure that when you buy a CD, whether it is copy-protected or not, you can record it onto your computer and move the songs to an MP3 player. It would also protect a computer science professor who needs to bypass copy-protection to evaluate encryption technology. In addition, the bill would codify the Betamax defense, which has been under attack by the entertainment industries in the 'INDUCE Act' and the MGM v. Grokster case. This kind of sanity would be a welcome change to our copyright law."

Have you ever ben playing a DVD, and the previews come on, and you try to fast forard through them, but you can't? This is because the movie companies set certain permissions on the disc, and the law says that the DVD player has to honor them. It is effectively illegal to make a DVD player that fast forwards through these ads.
Under copyright law, you have 'fair use' rights to copy works. for example quoting an excerpt from a book. Most copy-prevention systems ignore this, and because it is illegal to circumvent them, these systems hinder the rights of consumers.

If you've just crawled out from under a rock, you might not be aware of the Sony rootkit fiasco. H.R. 1201 would also force record companies to label CD's that use copy protection.

Finally, H.R.1201 would establish a legal standard that creators of software are not responsible for copyright by it's users. (In the same way the makers of VCR's should not be held responsible for bootleg movies.)

H.R. 1201 is an important reform.