Re: DMCA hearings and protests

In a prior post here I wrote the following:
>
> A law that can be abused to infringe on Free Speech is not a
> good law.

I'm really surprised at the negative responses to the above statement. Some reasons given were that laws against "yelling fire" in a movie theater, laws against libel, etc. are good laws. Thus what I said above is somehow off the mark or misleading.

Of course, those laws are good laws because they've been upheld in court to not infringe on Free Speech, probably because, in my lay perspective, one does not have the Free Speech rights to yell fire in a movie theater or libeling someone.

But there's still a lot of legitimate Free Speech rights. Thus I believe the summary I previously wrote still stands.

Regarding the discussion on this mailing list, we've been talking about the DMCA and its "takedown on notice" provision, and its use to stifle Fair Use, which as I understand it is a construct based on Free Speech rights. That is, a person can duplicate a portion of another's copyrighted work for scholarship, commentary and criticism, provided the person follows guidelines developed over the years by the courts. It is a balance between the rights of the copyright owner (as granted by the copyright clause) and the rights of the public -- with the First Amendment prominently figuring in the equation. (If I am wrong here, let me know.)

However, the DMCA can be used to stifle *legitimate* free speech rights as allowed under Fair Use (we are not talking libel or yelling fire in a theater). Thus, the DMCA is not good law. It is a terrible law. I won't even get into the other parts of DMCA which are equally bad. I'll be happy to see the entire DMCA struck down or repealed, and then replaced by good law to deal with legitimate issues in a good way, but until then it is a real blot on our law books.

Jon Noring
<noring[_at_]netcom.com> Received on Sat May 27 2000 - 14:10:26 GMT