Boucher and Lofgren bills
Rep. Lofgren and Rep. Boucher have now both introduced significant DMCA reforms. These bills are useful because they directly attack the harshest consequences of 1201 -- the fact that 1201 makes many circumvention acts and technologies illegal even when they are not aimed at an infringing purpose.
Problem: the entertainment industries don't want to have to prosecute actual infringers, if they can instead roll back the Betamax standard and control the actions of the much smaller number of providers of technologies. A reformed DMCA would put the focus back on the infringers and shift it away from technology providers, and so Jack Valenti has immediately insisted that it would be useless.
