Congressmen Rick Boucher (D-VA), John Doolittle (R-CA), Spencer Bachus (R-AL) and Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) feel that the DMCA was far too skewed in favor of the five major record labels who helped make the act law. The record industry isn’t the only beneficiary of the DMCA, film studios and book publishers also are advantaged by the legislation according to the congressmen. 

Boucher, Doolittle, Bachus and Kennedy are reintroducing legislation that would make major changes to the DMCA in order to protect the rights of users. The Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act was originally introduced by Boucher and Doolittle last fall but was not acted on by the last Congress. 

"The fair use doctrine is threatened today as never before," says Boucher. "The Digital Millennium Copyright Act dramatically tilted the copyright balance toward complete copyright protection at the expense of the Fair Use rights of the users of copyrighted material."

Boucher says that the legislation he and his cosponsors are reintroducing to the House is designed to, "assure that consumers who purchase digital media can enjoy a broad range of uses of the media for their own convenience in a way which does not infringe the copyright in the work." 

One aspect of the DMCA that the proposed Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act addresses is the prohibition of developing technology or measures that can be used to circumvent copyright protection technology even if the user is exercising their Fair Use rights. "A person who is circumventing a technical measure solely for the purpose of using that material under classic Fair Use principles should be free to do so," Rep. Doolittle said.
 
Under the DMCA it is against the law to manufacture, distribute or sell technology that is primarily designed to circumvent or infringe upon copyrights. That was the major issue in the Napster debate since the recording industry claimed that the software was designed specifically to infringe on copyrights by allowing users to trade digital copies of music. The proposed act rewrites that portion of the DMCA and allows for manufacture, distribution, and sale of the product if the product can be shown to have "substantial non-infringing uses". 
 
"Without a change in the law, individuals will be less willing to purchase digital media if their use of the media within the home is severely circumscribed and the manufacturers of equipment and software that enables circumvention for legitimate purposes will be reluctant to introduce the products into the market," says Rep. Boucher.

Another provision of the proposed legislation addresses copy-protected CDs. If enacted the Federal Trade Commission would require that copy-protected CDs be properly labeled as such. "The few copy-protected CDs which have been introduced into the US market to date are inadequately labeled and create broad consumer confusion," says Rep. Boucher.  Rep. Doolittle adds, "We are not proposing to outlaw the introduction of copy-protected CDs. We, however, want to ensure that if copy-protected CDs are introduced in larger volumes, consumers will know what they are buying."

If the bill passes that will be good news for U.S. consumers with the copyright laws moving in a direction that would protect the owners of the copyrighted material but also protect the rights of users.  On a more sinister note, a new plan proposed by Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP) at their annual meeting last August will have Canadians facing tactics of Orwellian proportions. 

The CACP plan would effectively make Canadian ISPs spies for the government. The proposed plan would seriously jeopardize the privacy of Canadian wireless and Internet users by requiring service providers to “have the technical capability to provide access to communications and information, under legal authority, to law enforcement and national security agencies.” In other words, they want ISPs to provide information to government officials about customers online and wireless activities.

The CACP plan also proposed the creation of a national database of every Canadian citizen with an Internet account.