WASHINGTON - Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) is considering a plan to meld his FAIR USE Act into the PRO-IP Act through an amendment.
The PRO-IP Act, currently making its way through Congress, is an attempt to ratchet up copyright protections, partly by boosting statutory damages that copyright holders can collect.
William Patry, Google's top copyright lawyer - and the writer of a seven-volume treatise on copyright law - called the bill the most "outrageously gluttonous [intellectual property] bill ever introduced in the U.S.," though Howard Berman, D-Calif., recently pulled the most controversial part of the bill.
Boucher, an advocate of DMCA reform and increased fair-use rights, has been considering a plan to attach his FAIR USE Act, which has never made much headway in Congress, to the PRO-IP Act.
At a luncheon held this week in Washington, Boucher said "there are some discussions about advancing some parts or all of 1201 in conjunction with other [intellectual property] measures, to do it as part of a package."
The most likely package would be some sort of PRO-IP/FAIR USE Act, and, according to ARS Technica, it would be modest win for consumers.
In a FAIR USE Act analysis done in 2007, ARS Technica said the bill contains a series of digital rights management loopholes, but it does not contain support for bypassing digital rights management in all situations where the intended use is legal. It would allow a user to bypass digital rights management in order to transmit content on a home network.
Boucher said he is not sure he will proceed with his plan, but he defended fair use at the luncheon, saying digital rights management enables companies to trump the law with harsh content restrictions that go beyond copyright protection.
"One thing I've learned in the quarter-century I've spent [in Congress] is that power once granted will be used," he warned. "I have no doubt that within a few years, we'll see companies taking steps to effectively cut off all fair use unless we change the law."
