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How can the the Content providers be protected while preserving the Right to "Fair" Use

In 1998 the federal government passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a 1998 law that gave copyright owners strong control over digital content. Now the senate committee, run by Senator Hollings has propose a successor, the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) S. 2048, to require that all digital storage media, Disks, Tape writers, etc. prevent "illegal" copying of data, and the Representative Howard Berman D-Cal has proposed the Peer to Peer Piracy Prevention Act (HR 5211), to would rewrite federal law to permit nearly unchecked electronic disruptions if a copyright holder has a "reasonable basis" to believe that piracy is occurring on peer-to-peer networks. Note: There are other Bills, and actions that are being proposed to tighten up copyright protections.

As technology advances the cost of making and distributing a quality copy decreases and thus the Content providers, Musicians, Movie producers, etc. and distributors, Broadcasters, Cable operators, etc. want to ensure that their costs will be repaid, with fair profits. If their content is "pirated" then they will not be funded to produce new content. Copyright law already permitted the operators to be sued for violation, but in recent times the providers have felt that they needed to extend the copyright periods and to restrict copying and distribution technology so that it would be illegal study or manufacture techniques that might be used on digital data.

Disclaimer: I am biased toward protecting the rights of content providers via limited time copyright while leaving the technology developments free of any before use controls. This page, and associated pages are my personal understandings and positions, and thus have not yet been corrected by people who know better or who have the opposing position, and I welcome any suggestions as to how to improve it:

Current articles:

Relevant Laws, Suites and Bills: (+ Increase copyright strength, - Decreases)

Stake holders -- In discussing a fair control of Industrial Productions, IP, it helps to recognize that there are a number of different groups who have stakes in this issue, e.g. the Control and Price of Copyrightable and Patentable material.

There are of course many other sites involved with this topic, See: Digital Access sites, but if one is to effect the Government, I suggest going to the above mentioned hub sites.

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December 13, 2004 15:41