The House finished business yesterday without passing the copyright “minibus” bill that included a number of changes to copyright, some of them good, some of them not so good. The “minibus” was a subset of HR 2391, the huge omnibus copyright bill, containing 8 separate bills, and which PK and others vigorously opposed. PK and its “friends of fair use” allies were able to have the most noxious parts of the bill stripped - including a provision that would have made the passive “making available” of a copyrighted work a crime, and would have lowered the infringement standard for such a violation from “willful” to “knowing, with reckless disregard.”

Despite the content industries’ best efforts ( including nearly a dozen bills introduced this Congress), two Congresses have now passed without the enactment of any major copyright legislation. There are several reasons for this: 1) the efforts of a large ad-hoc coalition of ISPs, Internet content companies, consumer electronics manufacturers, tech companies, consumer, library and civil liberties groups who think that copyright law is strong enough and which do not want to see new technologies hobbled by misguided copyright laws, 2) growing grassroots opposition to the content companies’ efforts, and 3) the content companies’ tendency to overreach. This was best exemplified by the provision added by Hollywood and the broadcasters which would have essentially outlawed technologies that allow consumers to skip ads in DVDs and digitally recorded broadcasts.

Regardless of the reason, it is becoming increasingly clear that broad fixes to copyright law are unlikely to pass. Like with the VCR 20 years ago, it is time for the content companies to find new ways to use technology to make money, rather than waste time and resources concocting legislative ways to hobble them. I mentioned in my 12/1 post about how the record companies are slowly starting to do this. It is time for the MPAA to do the same.

It has been my pleasure reporting to you for the past week - Mike returns tomorrow.

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