A trio of Democratic and Republican congressmen is pushing a bill that would amend the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA) to allow for so-called "fair use" of copyrighted digital materials by educators, librarians, students, artists, scientists, and other technology users and consumers.

The bill to amend the DMCA, the Digital Media Consumers Rights Act, was introduced in the House by Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va.; Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas; and Rep. John Doolittle, R-Calif. If passed, the bill would permit users to make copies of DVDs and other digital media for educational or research purposes. Supporters of the amendment, including education and consumer advocacy groups, say it would rightly extend the fair-use doctrine now enjoyed by users of print and analog media into the digital realm. But critics, including groups that represent digital content providers, argue the bill would weaken the copyright-protection measures that guard against digital piracy.

The DMCA amended U.S. copyright law to protect digitally recorded intellectual property from what Boucher has called the "twin threats" posed by the clarity of digitally recorded materials--the fact that copies of digitally recorded materials have the same quality and integrity as the original, no matter what their generation; and the ease with which pirated materials can be disseminated via the internet. The DMCA does so by making it illegal, under most circumstances, to circumvent digital locks placed on the content by copyright owners, even if the user's purposes are otherwise permitted under U.S. copyright law.

Opponents of the DMCA say it so tightly controls security over digitally recorded content that it unfairly prohibits what is defined elsewhere in the Copyright Act as fair use. Boucher's amendment aims to loosen restrictions to permit the bypassing of technical protections for the purposes of fair consumer and educational use and scientific research. To appease content providers, the bill also would have labels placed on product packages that say the digitally recorded materials being purchased are copyright-protected.

"For the movie and recording industries, legitimate educational and personal uses [of digitally recorded materials] are collateral damage in their attempts to stop piracy," said Kenneth DeGraff, policy advocate for the Consumers Union, a nonprofit testing and information organization that represents consumers.

"If, for example, a student has 10 movies and wants to show a total of five minutes of clips, technically, [he or she] can compile those clips, show them in a classroom, and everybody's better educated for it, were it not for an obscure federal law that prohibits [consumers] from using the media they buy in the way they want to use it," said DeGraff.

DeGraff said the proposed amendment is "so narrowly crafted that it only protects the educator's right to fair uses. You're still doing an illegal act if you're doing an illegal act."