FAIR USE Act of 2007

clipped from secure.eff.org Support the FAIR USE Act of 2007 Reps. Rick Boucher and John Doolittle's FAIR USE Act would remove some of the entertainment industry's most draconian anti-innovation weapons and chip away at the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's (DMCA) broad restrictions on fair use. The FAIR USE Act would limit the availability of statutory damages for secondary liability and allow innovators to make more reasonable business decisions about manageable levels of legal risk. Meanwhile, copyright owners could still get injunctions and actual damages for harm suffered, putting them in no worse a position than civil litigants in most other areas. the bill would loosen the grip of the DMCA, which restricts circumvention of digital rights management (DRM) restrictions even for lawful uses. The FAIR Use Act adds 12 exemptions, including the ability to circumvent for classic fair use purposes like news reporting, research, commentary, and criticism.