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Is "Fair Use" in Peril? ('Intellectual Property' Act strips away consumer rights)
Technology Review ^ | 11/19/2004 | Eric Hellweg

Posted on 11/20/2004 9:28:00 AM PST by Prime Choice

Do you like fast-forwarding through commercials on a television program you’ve recorded? How much do you like it? Enough to go to jail if you’re caught doing it? If a new copyright and intellectual property omnibus bill sitting on Congress’s desk passes, that may be the choice you'll face.

How can this be possible? Because language that makes fast-forwarding through commercials illegal—no doubt inserted at the behest of lobbyists for the advertising industry—was inserted into a bill that would allow people to fast forward past objectionable sections of a recorded movie (and I bet you already thought that was OK). And that’s but one, albeit scary, scenario that may come to pass if the Intellectual Property Protection Act is enacted into law. Deliberations on this legislation will be one of the tasks for the lame-duck Congress that commenced this week.

In a statement last month, Senator John McCain stated his opposition to this bill, and specifically cited the anti-commercial skipping feature: “Americans have been recording TV shows and fast-forwarding through commercials for 30 years,” he said. “Do we really expect to throw people in jail in 2004 for behavior they’ve been engaged in for more than a quarter century?”

Included in the legislation are eight separate bills, five of which have already passed one branch of Congress, one of which was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, and two of which have merely been proposed. By lumping all the bills together and pushing the package through both houses of Congress, proponents hope to score an enormous victory for Hollywood and some content industries.

Here’s more of what’s included: a provision that would make it a felony to record a movie in a theater for future distribution on a peer-to-peer network. IPPA would also criminalize the currently legal act of using the sharing capacity of iTunes, Apple’s popular music software program; the legislation equates that act with the indiscriminate file sharing on popular peer-to-peer programs. Currently, with iTunes, users can opt to share a playlist with others on their network. IPPA doesn’t differentiate this innocuous—and Apple sanctioned—act from the promiscuous sharing that happens when someone makes a music collection available to five million strangers on Kazaa or Grokster.

Not surprisingly, the bill has become a focal point for very vocal parties. In favor of the legislation are groups such as the Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America, and various songwriter, actor, and director organizations. “We certainly support it,” says Jonathan Lamy, spokesperson for the RIAA. “It includes a number of things to strengthen the hand of law enforcement to combat piracy. Intellectual property theft is a national security crime. It’s appropriate that the fed dedicate resources to deter and prosecute IP theft.”

Against the bill stand a number of technology lobbying groups and public-interest organizations. “[IPPA] is a cobbled-together package to which Congress has given inadequate attention. It is another step in Hollywood and the recording industry’s campaign to exert more control over content,” says Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a Washington, DC-based public interest group that aims to alert the public to fair use and consumer rights infringements, and fight those perceived infringements in Washington.

Anyone attuned to the machinations of Congress the last two years likely has become numb to the often overblown rhetoric on this issue. Both sides use hyperbole—usually in the form of calling a piece of legislation the death of an industry or the death of individual rights. The 1982 statement to a congressional committee by Jack Valenti, then head of the MPAA, that the VCR is to Hollywood what the Boston Strangler was to a woman alone still stands as the ne plus ultra of exaggerated claims. And civil libertarians haven’t met an affront that didn’t equal a stake through the heart of individual rights. But IPPA demands attention not just from Hill watchers, but from regular individuals. In part because IPPA is such a broad, encompassing bill that could affect things as pedestrian as fast-forwarding a commercial, but also because with Senator Orrin Hatch—a very Hollywood-friendly pol—on his way out as the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to be replaced possibly by Arlen Specter, many in the Hollywood community see this as an important, last chance to get their demands made into law.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: consumerrights; copyright; fairuse; firstamendment; intellectualproperty
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Don't touch that dial, citizen! You wouldn't want that on your record, would you?
1 posted on 11/20/2004 9:28:01 AM PST by Prime Choice
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To: Prime Choice

Yet another stupid law that cannot be enforced.


2 posted on 11/20/2004 9:30:45 AM PST by Graybeard58
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To: Prime Choice

When they pry my fast forward button from my cold dead hands!


3 posted on 11/20/2004 9:30:51 AM PST by OSHA (Anything not forbidden is mandatory.)
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To: Prime Choice

They'd better pass some gun legislation before trying to enforce that sort of law.


4 posted on 11/20/2004 9:32:02 AM PST by buddyholly (We flushed the Johns!!!)
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To: Prime Choice

Commercial police..ROTFLMAO


5 posted on 11/20/2004 9:32:04 AM PST by international american (GOD BLESS OUR VETERANS! LAND OF THE FREE BECAUSE OF THE BRAVE!!)
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To: Graybeard58
Yet another stupid law that cannot be enforced.

...yet.

6 posted on 11/20/2004 9:32:28 AM PST by Prime Choice (STFU ACLU.)
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To: Graybeard58

I despise the RIAA and MPAA for reasons like this


7 posted on 11/20/2004 9:33:03 AM PST by MetaLoki
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To: buddyholly; NYC GOP Chick

Madison Avenue is back on the blotter acid again!


8 posted on 11/20/2004 9:33:41 AM PST by international american (GOD BLESS OUR VETERANS! LAND OF THE FREE BECAUSE OF THE BRAVE!!)
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To: Prime Choice

Stupid and absolutely unenforceable. As long as you have legitimate ownership of a copyrighted work, you can do anything you please with that copy. This would be like saying you had to listen to every song on an album every time you played it. Even if passed, it's going to mean nothing.


9 posted on 11/20/2004 9:33:42 AM PST by Luddite Patent Counsel ("Inanity is the Mother of Convention")
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To: Prime Choice
Well, we all got along just fine before Beta and VHS (and CD and DVD and FM Radio).

Maybe libraries will just have to put some books on their shelves for us poor, benighted Red-State'rs

10 posted on 11/20/2004 9:34:04 AM PST by 1stMarylandRegiment (Conserve Liberty)
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To: Prime Choice
Intellectual property theft is a national security crime.

Continually gutting copyright laws by creating copyrights that do not expire and eliminating fair use is a crime against humanity.

11 posted on 11/20/2004 9:35:19 AM PST by killjoy (I'm John Kerry and I'm relieved of duty.)
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To: Luddite Patent Counsel
Stupid and absolutely unenforceable.

Not really. The goal is not to go after consumers but to go after producers of things like Tivo to make it impossible for the end user to skip over the commercials.

12 posted on 11/20/2004 9:37:11 AM PST by killjoy (I'm John Kerry and I'm relieved of duty.)
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To: Luddite Patent Counsel
As long as you have legitimate ownership of a copyrighted work, you can do anything you please with that copy.

Not if you have a TiVo. Those things are currently in the process of receiving patches so your system will auto-delete the shows you record after a certain period of time. Doesn't matter what your wishes are...the corporations come first.

Even if passed, it's going to mean nothing.

Today, perhaps. Tomorrow, I doubt it.

13 posted on 11/20/2004 9:38:56 AM PST by Prime Choice (STFU ACLU.)
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To: Prime Choice

I wonder if the Trade Federation will have Storm Troopers?

May the force be with you...

Heh...


14 posted on 11/20/2004 9:45:31 AM PST by EternalVigilance
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To: All

I wonder where the Senator from the RIAA, Orin Hatch, stands on this?


15 posted on 11/20/2004 9:46:35 AM PST by skip_intro
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To: Prime Choice

This is so stupid. What's next? Locking viewers in their barcoloungers so they can't get up and have a snack during a commercial? Will they outlaw having books in the same room, lest someone read during commercials? Will the mute button be next? And what will they do with the folks who just turn the darned thing OFF?

Hey, advertising folks--get over it! We hate most of your smarmy ads and there's no way you can force us to watch them!


16 posted on 11/20/2004 9:47:26 AM PST by MizSterious (First, the journalists, THEN the lawyers.)
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To: Luddite Patent Counsel
"As long as you have legitimate ownership of a copyrighted work, you can do anything you please with that copy. This would be like saying you had to listen to every song on an album every time you played it. Even if passed, it's going to mean nothing."

According to the RIAA, that $15 dollars you shuck out for an album only entitles you to lease the music subject to the RIAA diktats.

17 posted on 11/20/2004 9:53:40 AM PST by Tench_Coxe
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To: Prime Choice
I'll fastforward the ads anyway. Screw them. My VCR. My TV. My tape. My choice.

It's not like I'm selling the damn thing. It's for my own personal use.

18 posted on 11/20/2004 9:54:12 AM PST by Dan from Michigan ("...don't you fill me up with your rules, cause everybody knows that smoking ain't allowed in (bars))
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To: MizSterious
What's next? Locking viewers in their barcoloungers so they can't get up and have a snack during a commercial?

No snacks! Snacks are bad. Eat your spinach. And no reclining in that barcalounger, either. It's bad for your spine.


19 posted on 11/20/2004 9:57:06 AM PST by Nick Danger (Food nazis, spine nazis, we got all kinds of nazis now. It's for your own good.)
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To: Graybeard58

You concern should be how far they will trying to enforce it.


20 posted on 11/20/2004 10:00:57 AM PST by IStillBelieve (G.W. Bush '04: Biggest popular-vote victory in history, and first popular-vote majority in 16 years!)
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