RE: [dvd-discuss] Draft of upcoming article

["Dean Sanchez" <DSanchez(at)fcci-group.com>]

I would be cautious about the phrase 'illegal only "for the purpose of
copyright infringement."'  It is my understanding that fair use is a
defense for copyright infringement.  So not all copyright infringement
would be illegal.  I know that this has been discussed here before, but
maybe there should be some affirmative declaration of fair use and first
sale rights.

In the Wired article "A Call to End Copyright Confusion"
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,49201,00.html , a Disney
mouthpiece named Padden is quoted as saying "There is no right to fair
use. Fair use is a defense against infringement."   The industry's
stance is that citizens have no rights as it relates to the material
that they have purchased.


-----Original Message-----
From: Andy Oram [mailto:andyo@oreilly.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2001 2:18 PM
To: dvd-discuss@lweb.law.harvard.edu
Subject: [dvd-discuss] Draft of upcoming article


I'm not convinced that tying anti-circumvention laws to
intent will solve the problem (after all, what's the intent
of the DeCSS creators and promoters? Who determines?) But
I'm considering adding the following paragraph to the
article that's at
http://www.oreilly.com/~andyo/professional/ruling_2600.html:

  Some defenders of DeCSS suggest changing copyright law so
  that anti-circumvention is illegal only "for the purpose
  of copyright infringement." This would make the
  anti-circumvention law less of a radical imposition on the
  course of technology. Perhaps it would change an
  unconstitutional law into a constitutional one. But it
  would leave it up to courts to decide what the intent of
  programmer is, something that is hard to determine even
  with DeCSS.

Andy