Music Services Sell Out Fair Use - Internet video copies w/be next.

[cyberpj]

Season of Bad Laws, Part 4: Music Services Sell Out Fair Use
June 04, 2006
According to our DC sources, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property is planning on marking up and expediting a not-yet-introduced bill entitled the Section 115 Reform Act (aka SIRA) this coming Wednesday, June 7. Why the rush? Because otherwise someone might notice that the bill represents an unholy alliance between the major music service providers (AOL, Yahoo, Apple, Real Networks, etc.) and music publishing industry. If the bill passes, they win, but fair use loses.

SIRA's main aim is clearing the way for online music services by revising the current mechanical compulsory license set out in Section 115 of the Copyright Act to accommodate "full downloads, limited downloads, and interactive streams." So far so good, but the devil is in the details. This license specifically includes and treats as license-able "incidental reproductions...including cached, network, and RAM buffer reproductions."

By smuggling this language into the Copyright Act, the copyright industries are stacking the deck for future fights against other digital technologies that depend on making incidental copies. Just think of all the incidental copies that litter your computer today -- do you have a license for every copy in your browser's cache?

This is dangerous language that creates a dangerous precedent. When courts look at how copyright should apply to new digital technologies, they often have few judicial precedents for guidance and thus they turn to the Copyright Act itself for clues about how Congress views similar issues. Incidental copies made in the course of otherwise lawful activities should be treated either as outside the scope of a copyright holder's rights or as a fair use (even the Copyright Office agrees on the fair use point). But you can be sure that the copyright industries will use SIRA as a precedent to the contrary in future fights.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004721.php