A new bill, to be announced today in Washington DC, would allow
US consumers to lawfully copy CDs, DVDs and any other digital works
for their personal use. According to the Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren,
who introduced the bill, the “Digital Choice and Freedom Act” is an
answer to the power “of copyright holders to control the way
consumers use digital content.”
Zoe Lofgren claims that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act has
altered the “traditional balance” of copyright law against the
intent of its creators. The proposed law would give consumers the
right to make non-infringing use of digital works, such as making
back-up copies of digital works for their personal use, and to use
digital works on their “preferred digital media devices.”
The bill goes further, to prohibit non-negotiable clickwrap
licences that “limit the rights and expectations” of consumers.
Finally, whilst it recognises that copyright owners are free to
employ technical measures to protect their work, it requires them
to “ensure that those measures allow lawful consumers to make
non-infringing uses of the work.”
If a copyright owner fails to make a solution “publicly
available”, the bill allows consumers to use circumvention devices
without committing an offence.
