Artists Speak Out Against 'Fair Use' Restriction On Digital Media

by , 8:00 AM EST, February 25th, 2002

Grateful Dead lyricist, John Perry Barlow, is speaking out against restrictions on personal use of electronic media. Reuters News is reporting that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA), which was enacted to protect the intellectual rights of content creators and property rights of content distributors, is meeting some opposition. Several groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, oppose the DMCA, saying that it infringes on the personal rights individuals have for the fair use of content.

The DMCA has strong backing from many corporations that provide electronic content. From the Reuters article:

Enacted in 1998, the law prohibits creating or distributing technology that can be used to circumvent copyright protections.

Movie studios, record labels and software companies support the law, arguing that tight restrictions are needed to stop people from using the Internet to freely swap intellectual property they should be paying for.

At a conference on security, John Perry Barlow spoke out against the DMCA. From the Reuters article:

"It sucks," Barlow said when asked to summarize what he thinks of the law. "It's unconstitutional."

Not only does the law curtail individual rights to free speech, he said, but by limiting the exchange of ideas for the sake of corporate profits, it is also culturally damaging.

"Society has certain rights, (like) the right to know that supersedes the rights of content distributors," Barlow said.

There are several cases where the two side square off, the most prominent of which is currently one involving the Russian software company, ElcomSoft Co. Ltd., which sold software that allowed proprietary e-books using Adobe software to be downloaded to computers to be read aloud. The case is seen as a prime example of 'fair use' versus the intellectual rights of the content creators.

The Mac Observer Spin:

Fair Use figures prominently in Apple's business model. iTunes and iPod both would suffer mightily if the RIAA had its way, and this is despite the fact that we have Fair Use rights to use both tools to listen to our legitimately owned music. The RIAA wants to keep us from being able to rip our CDs in the name of anti-piracy, and this includes CDs we fairly and legally own. The freedom to be able to carry those tunes around on your iPod is all that much worse according to the strategy of the RIAA. The only good digital media is digital media that is sanitized and controlled in such a way that it meets the criteria of the RIAA, and the iPod runs directly contrary to that.

The DCMA is legislation that is out of control, and it is the DCMA that the RIAA and MPAA are relying on to subvert our hard earned Fair Use rights. We are delighted to see John Perry Barlow make a stand against the DCMA, but it is going to take far more than one or two musicians and artists to bring this issue to a high enough level of public attention to get lawmakers to give a darn. The only thing that can overcome the power of the lobbyists is the threat of getting kicked out of office. If lawmakers don't come to their senses, it will take the courts to rule against the DMCA, and that process will be long and slow.

Reuters News Article