Dear Representative Capuano

I hope that you'll support the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act (HR 107), a
bill introduced by Rick Boucher and John Doolittle that would extend to digital
media the doctrine of fair use.  This bill is particularly important to many of
us at MIT who are involved in the development and promotion of open-source
software.

As you know, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA) made it
illegal to circumvent copy-protection software.  Taken at face value this
restriction seems entirely reasonable.  It leads, however, to the absurd
situation in which a consumer who has legally purchased and paid for a DVD is
nevertheless legally enjoined from viewing the DVD on his or her computer using
free DVD-player software.  In order to play the DVD legally, the consumer must
instead either purchase a separate DVD player, or find and purchase a licensed
DVD-player program for his or her computer.  No licensed players currently
exist for open-source operating systems such as GNU/Linux, since software
developers have been scared away from such projects by the DMCA's ban on
circumvention of copy protection schemes.

In the early 1980s when video cassette recorders were first becoming popular,
the copying of video tapes for personal use was considered fair use of
copyrighted material.  In the 2000s, the same should be true in the case of
circumventing copy protection schemes for personal use.

Matthew Belmonte