Congratulations to Congressman Rick Boucher for his plans to introduce legislation to reverse one of the more loathsome aspects of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Under the DCMA, you can’t circumvent anti-copying devices even when you simply want to make a copy of a CD for your own use. I’m not in Boucher’s district but like him am from Virginia, and I suspect that the ghosts of Washington, Jefferson, Henry and the rest must be nodding approvingly about his efforts to resist Hollywood tyranny–obligingly enacted into law by the recipients of massive campaign donations. Right now it’s doubtful that Boucher’s efforts will go anywhere, but it’s important that they happen, so that the way can be paved toward the eventual repeal of a whole series of Stamp Acts from our well-bought politicians.
Boucher comes from the Southwestern part of Virginia, a poor section of the state, and most likely he can appreciate how much Hollywood has widened the very Digital Divide that the politicians issued platitudes about. Clinton-Gore made laudable progress in popularizing the Net and bringing it to schools and libraries, but in the long run harmed these institutions and the population in general by letting Hollywood dominate intellectual property planning for the Net–even to the point of having Bruce Lehman, ex-lobbyist for the glitter people, run the administration’s hearings on the subject. The Republicans, of course, were hardly blameless; otherwise the DCMA wouldn’t have happened. And remember, one of the more despicable examples of recent copyright law, the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, is a Republican creation passed in part with campaign donations in mind or at least with an aggressive interest in pandering. The late Bono even admitted as much. As reported by the Washington Post, he said he wanted “Hollywood’s leaders to ‘write your own legislation and bring it to us'” on copyright protection and related issues. No such deal for schools and libraries.
Needless to say, under TeleRead, you could make as many copies of an e-book or other item as you wanted for yourself or other TeleRead users. In fact, it would be to the benefit of the copyright owners if you did–since they would be paid from a national digital library fund according to the number of accesses. TeleRead would strive to honor the rights of creators and users alike.
