U.S. Representative Rick Boucher has proposed a new bill in the Congress that aims to allow consumers to copy and safely play digital material that they legally own, and to protect user rights for consumers of copyright material. The bill also aims to protect fair use in hardware devices, which The RIAA is strongly against as of this moment.

Under the Freedom and Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship (FAIR USE) Act, users will be allowed to copy material they own, but will also be granted exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA. Users will be allowed to make limited copies of copyrighted material for personal purposes as well as for reviews, news reporting and education. Also, manufacturers and service providers will not be held accountable for what customers do with their devices and services.

"The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) dramatically tilted the copyright balance toward complete copyright protection at the expense of the public's right to fair use," said U.S. Representative Rick Boucher.

A fragment from the FAIR USE doctrine, available online here, reads:

The court shall remit statutory damages for secondary infringement, except in a case in which the copyright owner sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that the act or acts constituting such secondary infringement were done under circumstances in which no reasonable person could have believed such conduct to be lawful.

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), "the bill would loosen the grip of the DMCA, which restricts circumvention of digital rights management (DRM) restrictions even for lawful uses".

This news article was written on March 8, 2007, quoting Anandtech.