With a goal to uphold principles of freedom, fairness, innovation, and cybersecurity, “the coalition is committed to repairing recent damage dealt to the Founders’ original commitment to balanced copyright protection,” stated the Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of the group’s members, in a press release.
The PTFC will focus efforts to oppose the most controversial section of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which prohibits users from bypassing copy-protection locks in DVDs, CDs, and e-books, as well as to gather support for the Digital Media Consumers’ Rights Act (H.R. 107), which would allow copy-protection circumvention for fair-use or research purposes. Group members have already met with representatives of more than 20 congressional offices, the CNet online news service reported June 21.
Library organizations represented are the American Library Association, the American Association of Law Libraries, the Association of Research Libraries, the Medical Library Association, and the Special Libraries Association. Other coalition members include BellSouth, Consumers Union, Intel, SBC, and Sun Microsystems.
Posted July 2, 2004.