Facilitating Fair Use in the Digital Age

The paper refers to the response of the digital content industries to the threat of large scale digital copyright piracy and their successful lobby of legislatures on a global scale for laws that prevent it. It points to the basic problem of the resulting laws in not striking an appropriate balance between the interests of digital copyright holders and others who may have legitimate claims to access and use a protected work. It argues that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (and other similar laws) takes an all or nothing approach to circumvention technologies. This article advocates a new approach, namely developing a simple and inexpensive procedure to resolve disputes before an administrative agency about lack of access to a protected work for legitimate purposes. It contends that such an approach will prove more effective than current legislation and legislative proposals.