Boucher's copyright address

Representative Rick Boucher (D-VA) discusses our rights to manipulate content that we have legally purchased. "In fact, fair use rights to obtain and use a wide array of information are essential to the exercise of our cherished First Amendment rights. The very vibrancy of our democracy is dependent on the information, availability and use, that is facilitated by the fair use doctrine."
Read article at www.techlawjournal.com

 Learn from the libraries

"The fine balance between scholarship and piracy eludes us today in our relentless struggle to monetize the digital delivery of art and other intellectual property. Devoid of contextual motive, we now declare illegal and immoral any use of digits outside their predefined, technically based rule set."
Read article at www.business2.com

 Jail time in the digital age

In this New York Times opinion piece, law professor Lawrence Lessig questions the extent of recent copyright legislation. "Authors have an important and legitimate interest in protecting their copyrights. The law should help authors where it can. But the law should not push its power beyond the protection of copyright, and the law should especially not criminalize activities that are central to research in encryption and security."
Read article at www.nytimes.com

 A cold look at chilled speech

Professor Siva Vaidhyanathan discusses the dangers of overly protective copyright legislation. "As more and more 'speech' goes digital and as those digits get locked down with increasingly stronger clickwrap -- copyright and copy protection measures -- speech faces the very impediments the Constitution's framers took pains to avoid."
Read article at www.wired.com

 The DMCA and the erosion of privacy

"Protecting copyrights is an important function of government. Authors and publishers need copyright protection to be properly compensated for the time and money put into writing a book, composing a song, or creating a screenplay. But the DMCA goes too far in its zeal to protect copyrights. It ends up stepping all over the free speech rights of researchers in the fields of cryptography, security, and privacy."
Read article at www.privacyfoundation.org

 Electronic Publishers condemn DMCA

The Electronic Publishers Coalition thinks that the DMCA goes too far in its restrictions of fair use rights. "We also recognize from our close experience working with electronic books, that readers need and deserve greater leeway with the e-books they purchase than the current limited [digital rights management] and security technology provides."
Read article at www.epccentral.org

 The American crocodile that swallowed freedom

"The US Congress has twice rolled over when faced with the lobbying muscle of the RIAA. Its first act of appeasement was the granting of a ludicrous extension of the period during which works enjoy copyright protection. But the coup de grace came when the RIAA persuaded the supine US legislature to pass the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) - aka the Copyright Lawyers Lifetime Employment Act - which, among other things, makes it a crime even to speculate in public about technical measures to circumvent copy protection schemes."
Read article at www.observer.co.uk

 Why the E-Free speech debate matters

"The argument around the DMCA isn't whether we shouldn't have protections: Most everyone agrees that we need to safeguard copyright, as the electronic publishing of music, movies, and books increases. The debate is really whether the act will have the unhappy effect of infringing on freedom of speech, intellectual exchange, and consumers' rights. With the Sklyarov case, DMCA opponents are drawing attention to the underlying effects that broad restrictions on circumventing copyright protection could have on intellectual or individual interests."
Read article at www.businessweek.com

 Anticircumvention rules are a threat to science

Pamela Samuelson, a law professor at UC Berkeley, writes about the dangers of anti-circumvention laws. "The scientific community must recognize the harms these rules pose and provide guidance about how to improve the anticircumvention rules." (Science Magazine does not permit direct linking to the article unless you are a registered user. However, you can read the article by following the link below to Samuelson's web page and then reading the article titled "Anti-Circumvention Rules Threaten Science".)
Read article at www.sims.berkeley.edu

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