Petteri Pyyny
2 Aug 2002 16:28
President of the Consumer Electronics Association, Gary Shapiro, and Silicon Valley House Representative, Zoe Lofgren, commented proposed copyright bills and also the existing DMCA law in a panel held in Silicon Valley. Panel included attendees from RIAA and several consumer electronics and IT companies.
"The DMCA was a very flawed law," CEA President Gary Shapiro said. "We signed off on it, and it was a huge mistake."
Rep. Lofgren said that "the DMCA has had unintended consequences." She said she signed off on the law because she was convinced it would be applied narrowly to prevent piracy, but instead it has been used to thwart technological development. "I think we have had a very wide set of anti-technology rules emerging from the courts," she said. She also said that the new, proposed copyright laws should not be used to kill technological innovations and prevent evolution of new business models.
RIAA's representative said that the pleas for fair use rights mask a desire for widespread stealing of digital content. "Anybody who doesn't want to talk about this as a stealing problem hasn't created anything," he said.
Also, at same panel, a representative of digital consumers' group, DigitalConsumer.org told an example of DMCA's restrictions. His friend's daughter wanted to compose a multimedia report for school and had to actually use CSS cracking tool to get content off from CSS-protected DVDs that she used for her school report (fair use clauses give rights to use portions of any copyrighted material in educational use) and therefor violated the DMCA.
Full story from ZDNet