WASHINGTON -- Democratic Congressman Rick Boucher of Virginia, a senior member of the Courts, Internet and Intellectual Property Subcommittee, made a major policy speech on Tuesday in which he advocated changes in current copyright law to reaffirm the fair use doctrine in the Internet age.
Speaking at the Digital Download, a one-day conference sponsored by the Consumer Electronics Association in Washington, D.C., Boucher outlined his ideas for revising copyright law. Among the proposed changes, Boucher would allow "in-store" sampling of music over the Internet as well as online consumer storage of music files.
"The time, in my opinion, has come, for the Congress to reaffirm the fair use doctrine, and to bolster specific fair use rights, which are now at risk," said Boucher in his speech.
Among those rights that he listed as at risk were the use of copyrighted material for distance learning over the Internet, the doctrine of "first sale," which allows the purchaser of copyrighted material to lend it out or resell it, and the right to sample music.
"At the present time you can go into a record store and you can listen to samples of music," Boucher said, but the in-store exemption that permits that for the physical world does not apply in the online world. "In my opinion," he said, "it should."
Boucher also took issue in his speech with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
"There are some today who believe that the legislation went too far," he said, later confirming that he counted himself among these critics.
"For example, it creates a new crime of circumventing a technological protection measure that guards access to a copyrighted work."
The way the law is written, the purpose of the circumvention is immaterial. "Perhaps," said Boucher, "the only conduct that should be declared criminal is circumvention for the purpose of infringement."
In an interview on Friday, Boucher said he would support changes in the DMCA to that effect.
The congressman was also bothered by what he sees as an attempt by content providers to protect their copyrights by downgrading the quality of TV signals or by insisting on the use of set-top box technology that prohibits copying.
He said that both of these ideas would infringe on the fair use right to time shift (tape a program and view it at a later time). Instead, he suggested that a standard like that for VHS tapes be instituted, requiring that digital recorders recognize watermarks to prevent unauthorized copying.
"The time has come for the motion picture studios to present a proposal along these lines," Boucher said, "in the meantime, I very much hope that the content community will not attempt unilateral approaches to protecting content."
Boucher concluded his speech by discussing some "unfinished business" -- a bill he proposed last year to allow consumers to archive their music on the Internet and access it at any time or in any place they choose.
"A person who owns a CD takes that CD with him when he goes to his car, he takes it with him when he goes to a friend's house," he said. There is no reason, Boucher argued, that consumers should not have the added convenience of being allowed to treat digital music in the same way.
