[Rumori] another ally?

[Bob Boster]

"Electronics Makers, Holders of Copyright Fight Over 'Fair Use'"
Investor's Business Daily (04/06/04) P. A6; Seitz, Patrick

Consumer electronics makers and consumer advocates say fair use rights are 
being eroded as new digital technologies emerge, such as HDTV. The movie 
industry and other content owners are allied with Microsoft in enforcing 
more strict copyright protection than was in place in the pre-digital 
world. Content owners are seeking to control device manufacturers and 
smaller companies such as 321 Studios, which is appealing a case brought 
against it by movie studios. The DVD X Copy product in question allows 
consumers to make copies of DVDs they own on their computer hard drive, but 
federal courts in California and New York ruled the software violates the 
1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which makes it illegal to 
distribute tools circumventing copyright protections. DVD X Copy contains 
DeCSS code that unscrambles CSS encryption used on DVDs. 321 Studios has 
argued its product is legal under fair use rules established in 1981 for 
VCR technology, and notes that copies made with its software are not 
replicable and contain disclaimers. "The people who get screwed are the 
next Hewlett and Packard, the next Steve Jobs, and the next TiVo," says 
Electronic Frontier Foundation senior intellectual property attorney Fred 
von Lohmann. Another battleground is HDTV, which the Federal Communications 
Commission mandated must carry embedded broadcast flags that would limit 
playback and recording of HDTV shows. Home Recording Rights Coalition 
Chairman and Consumer Electronics Association head Gary Shapiro says the 
entertainment industry is worried about peer-to-peer file sharing, but the 
audio and video formats used for HDTV make shows too large to easily trade 
online. Some legislators in favor of fair use protection have proposed the 
Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act to counter previous legal 
encroachments, including the DMCA.