Music industry watch

Legal wrangling

Looks like there is lots of DMCA related legal wrangling going on right now. Charter Cable is trying to stop the flood of subpoenas from the RIAA, and the EFF has a new paper on the DMCA: Unintended Consequences: Five Years under the DMCA:

In practice, the anti-circumvention provisions have been used to stifle a wide array of legitimate activities, rather than to stop copyright piracy. As a result, the DMCA has developed into a serious threat to several important public policy priorities:

• Section 1201 Chills Free Expression and Scientific Research.
• Section 1201 Jeopardizes Fair Use.
• Section 1201 Impedes Competition and Innovation.
• Section 1201 Becomes All-Purpose Ban on Access To Computer Networks

So, are you an EFF member yet?? These guys work hard at keeping the bad guys at bay!

And finally, Sen. Norm Coleman is pushing to reduce penalties for downloading copyrighted materials:

"I can tell you that $150,000 per song is not reasonable, and that's technically what you can put in front of somebody," Coleman said in a conference call with reporters. "That forces people to settle when they may want to fight, but they're thinking, 'goodness, gracious, what am I going to face?' "

The bottom line is this: The DMCA and RIAA are starting to get some serious opposition. The DMCA is starting to turn on the RIAA -- this is a perfect example of how these bought legislations aren't going to fly.

Posted by Mayhem at October 6, 2003 11:12 AM