Chuck Sims is an attorney at Proskauer Rose who represented the eight movie studios suing 2600 magazine over DMCA violations. The studios won near-completely at the trial court and before the Second Circuit appeals court, and 2600 did not appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Second Circuit concluded: "The DMCA does not impose even an arguable limitation on the opportunity to make a variety of traditional fair uses of DVD movies, such as commenting on their content, quoting excerpts from their screenplays, and even recording portions of the video images and sounds on film or tape by pointing a camera, a camcorder, or a microphone at a monitor as it displays the DVD movie. The fact that the resulting copy will not be as perfect or as manipulable as a digital copy obtained by having direct access to the DVD movie in its digital form, provides no basis for a claim of unconstitutional limitation of fair use." (http://www.eff.org/Cases/MPAA_DVD_cases/20011128_ny_appeal_decision.html) As for Chuck's point about Politech posts, this list is only as good as the submissions I receive. Right now, most of what's written about the DMCA is hardly flattering -- the people who support it as written don't *need* to say much, and they don't. Previous Politech message: "DMCA is a 'copyright cudgel,' from Chron. of Higher Education" http://www.politechbot.com/p-03819.html -Declan --- Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 09:43:20 -0400 From: "Charles Sims" <CSimsat_private> To: declanat_private Subject: Re: FC: DMCA is a "copyright cudgel," from Chron. of HigherEducation MIME-Version: 1.0 Declan: Sloganeering is not journalism, and to repeat (or republish) the canard that "fair use is dying" is preposterous. As you know, and as your readers should know, the fair use doctrine of copyright law is unchanged since 1976 (indeed, since the 1840's, when Justice Story famously explicated it), and it has not been amended or altered by the DMCA. The DMCA does not impact, at all, the fair use rights that US law has provided for more than 160 years. It has not amended, or changed, Section 107 of the copyright law, which now embodies the fair use defense, at all. So quote and criticise and review to your heart's content; but try to avoid the knowing falsehoods. You want to stare at or photograph a Picasso in someone's home, or a never-published manuscript of Orwell in someone's office, the better to criticise or review them? You can't. But not because of the DMCA; the reason is that fair use has never been a tool to obtain access. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Wed Jul 31 2002 - 09:54:07 PDT