Boucher Introduces New Bill

brandido writes "The Register is reporting that Rep. Rick Boucher unveiled his attempt at returning some rights to consumers. According to the Register: "As we reported yesterday, some of the biggest names in IT names were on hand to support a legislation from Rep. Rick Boucher unveiled this morning. Boucher vowed to strike out the repressive portions of the DMCA, and 'directs the Federal Trade Commission to undertake a rulemaking to assure adequate notice to the public of any lack of functionality which may attend the purchase of copy protected CDs.'" Details of the bill can be found in PDF format , as can a summary and Boucher's Statement (taken from The Reg story)." Oddly, this bill focuses on notification that you're buying copy-restricted music disks instead of CDs (which is useful, but hardly major), and only contains a few vague amendments to the DMCA itself. Neither of these is worth paying much attention to: Congress is about to wrap up and go home for the year, and will start afresh in January with a clean slate. Perhaps in January some bright Congressperson will introduce a bill which actually takes strong steps toward repealing the DMCA.

Comments

Not so bad

[sulli]

It adds a "substantial non-infringing use" exception to the anti-circumvention rule. This is a good thing as it would legalize many of the tools (e.g. DeCSS) that are currently barred, n'est-ce pas?

Of course it's not going anywhere in this Congress. But advocates for freedom can push for an expanded version to be introduced now, while giving Boucher credit for at least proposing a step in the right direction.

Beats Nothing

[anonicon]

Quote: "Oddly, this bill focuses on notification that you're buying copy-restricted music disks instead of CDs (which is useful, but hardly major)."

Actually, this is more than useful if the warnings disclose *everything* that the CD's "copy-protection" does, like preventing you from playing or copying it with your PC, PS2, mp3-cd player/discman, or consumer CD recorder. Getting the prominent warning on the CD case in front of Joe Public instead of being buried on my site where most people *won't* see it is a great step.

We all know this proposal will not pass during this session, but it's a warning shot for (hopefully) more substantial legislation which will occur at the beginning of next term.

Peace.

Re:Zoe Lofgren's bill sounds better

[GreyWolf3000]

I don't want to know that the disk is copy-protected, I want a disk that IS NOT copy-protected, DRMed or screwed in any way to attempt to prevent me from making a copy for personal use. I also don't want DRM or copy-protection schemes built into the hardware I buy to play my copies on. I'd much rather pay additional fees in my media and components (as I already do) than be prevented (in some way someone will break) from making a copy.

You're asking too much--if the content providers want to place ridiculous restrictions, they have that right. They should of course be required to disclose that information--it goes against business ethics (which are normally near-impossible to legislate). In this case, however, it's a warning label, which has been done before.

If I want to sell a crappy product, you would agree that I have every right to do so. If a company, say McDonalds, were to take a high-selling product (let's say a Big Mac), cripple it by either raising prices or using tofu instead of beef (or whatever is really in there), they'd have every right.

The situation here is that the said crippling may not visibly worsen the product for most people (except for those who might try to play the CD on their computer--which is a lot). Also, you can't get most mainstream media without playing by *AA's rules, whereas one could go to Burger King or Wendy's instead of McDonalds.

This I think is a great argument for mandatory disclosure (like the one in this bill). Let people see that they're buying an inferior product, and they will start looking for other options. At that point people will still be willing to pay for music (again, I'm talking about average Joe here, not techies), and a new business model can emerge. Up until recently, the media companies haven't changed business models because they haven't had to--they think that after eliminating Napster, and (hopefully) P2P, things can return to normal. If the masses find out that they're getting sold crippled cd's, I think (and maybe I'm being overly optimistic) that they'll respond in such a way that things will change in a positive way.