New Copyright and DMCA-Related Consumer Protection Legislation

Declan McCullagh reports in a CNET article that U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Cal.) has or soon will re-introduce legislation that would limit the DMCA's anticircumvention provisions (12 U.S.C. § 1201) so that they would not apply to circumvention for purposes that constitute fair use or noninfringing use under ordinary copyright law. Her legislation would expressly permit "in order to perform or display the work, or an adaptation of the work, on a digital media device, if such performance or display is not public." The legislation would also expressly apply the first sale doctrine to digital media, though it's not clear that doing so would negate restrictive provisions in digital media licenses. Link to the draft she submitted in the last Congress here.

Meanwhile, Dan Gillmor's column in the Mercury News reports that U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wants DRM-secured and other copy-protected media to bear prominent labels to that effect.