SEPT. 29 | WASHINGTON—REP. LAMAR SMITH (R-TEXAS), CHAIRMAN of the House subcommittee on intellectual property, withdrew his mammoth Copyright Modernization Act last week, just as the full Judiciary Committee was scheduled to vote on the measure.
Months in the works, the bill would have created a new, streamlined system for licensing online music, something most of the parties involved in online music distribution agree is necessary.
But the bill also included controversial measures, such as a provision that would limit consumers’ ability to record music from satellite radio services and digital broadcast channels, and one subjecting temporary buffer copies of digital songs to copyright royalties.
In withdrawing his bill, Smith said that, while he believed he had the votes to get it through the committee, he did not believe it could be passed by the full chamber this year and he wanted to spare the committee a series of potentially tricky votes on amendments.
With that, barring any last-minute surprises attached to some must-pass appropriations bill, the copyright wars went quiet in the U.S., at least for now.
And, with control of the House up for grabs in next month’s midterm elections, they could be on hold for a while.
Although Smith vowed to reintroduce his bill next year, he would lose his chairmanship if the House changes hands and with it, control of his subcommittee’s agenda.
Yet, while things have gone quiet on the copyright front in the U.S., at least until after the elections, in Europe and elsewhere in the world, they’re definitely “hotting up,” as they say in England, and often in ways that run counter to the legal and legislative tide in the U.S.
LAST WEEK, THE BRITISH LIBRARY, the UK’s official national library, issued a manifesto calling for a “serious updating” of current copyright law.
“Unless there is a serious updating of copyright law to recognize the changing technological environment,” the library’s CEO Lynne Brindley warned ZDNet UK, “the law becomes an ass.”
Unlike Rep. Smith’s copyright “modernization” effort, however, the British manifesto calls for placing limits on the use of digital rights management technology and stronger legal protections for the rights of users of digital copyrighted material.
Issued at the Labour Party Conference in Manchester, the manifesto calls for explicit statutory acknowledgment that traditional limitations on the rights of copyright owners, such as “fair dealing,” (roughly equivalent to the American concept of “fair use”) apply equally in the digital age.
“Digital is not different,” the manifesto declares, inverting a common refrain among copyright owners in the U.S. “We believe that if limitations and exceptions are not clearly extended to the digital environment, knowledge will potentially become simply a commodity to be bought and sold by those that can afford it.”
More specifically, the British Library wants to limit copyright owners’ ability to get around statutory limitations on their rights through the use of DRM.
“New, potentially restricting technologies [such as DRMs] and contracts issued with digital works should not exceed the statutory exceptions for fair dealing access allowed for” in existing copyright law.
That, of course, is precisely what critics of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act claim that law does. By barring circumvention of encryption regardless of the purpose, they say, the DMCA effectively makes fair use impossible.
Australia is also calling for a “fairer deal for [the] public on copyright.”
On Sept. 22, the Australian Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, released draft legislation that would legalize “format shifting,” even if it meant circumvention.
“Millions of consumers would no longer be breaching the law when they record their favorite TV program or copy CDs they own into a different format,” Ruddock said. “These balanced and practical reforms recognize
consumers shouldn’t be treated as copyright pirates.”
The draft bill will be introduced in the Australian Parliament next month.
Whether the proposed British and Australian reforms will survive the political process intact, of course, remains to be seen.
In France, for instance, Apple Computer and others managed to beat back some of the most threatening portions of the so-called “iPod law,” which at one point would have required Apple to open its iTunes DRM to other portable music player manufacturers.
But DRM, particularly as used by American content companies, is clearly becoming a hot political issue around the world. At the very least, that means the legislative copyright wars have become a global fight.
