Rep. Boucher Introduces Bill to Amend DMCA Anti-Circumvention Clause

A U.S. congressman said Monday that he intended to change a controversial copyright law to allow consumers to override technologies that prevent them from making digital copies of music, movies and software. Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., said he plans to introduce a bill that would eliminate the "anti-circumvention" clause of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a 1998 law that updated copyright laws for the digital era. . . . A U.S. congressman said Monday that he intended to change a controversial copyright law to allow consumers to override technologies that prevent them from making digital copies of music, movies and software. Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., said he plans to introduce a bill that would eliminate the "anti-circumvention" clause of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a 1998 law that updated copyright laws for the digital era.

Intended to discourage piracy, the clause has come under increasing fire over the past year by people who say it imposes severe limits on the rights of consumers to make personal backup copies or otherwise control music they have purchased. The clause has inspired high-profile court battles and made a minor celebrity out of Dmitry Sklyarov, the Russian programmer jailed for writing a program that defeated a copy-protection measure in Adobe Systems' eBook software.

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