Rep. Rick Boucher Rallies Congress to the Defense of Consumers

Legislation Would Bring Sanity to Copyright Laws

Consumer's Rights Would Be Reinstated

The Internet's biggest friend and defender in Congress, Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) has introduced a bill that would set new ground rules for music distribution in the online world. And would remove the giant club from the hands of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)

The Music Online Competition Act, or MOCA, would update copyright law to make it easier for online music services to conduct business without worrying about running afoul of the major music labels. Even more importantly, it would bring competition back to the music business and prevent the RIAA from creating a monopoly in music distribution.

Music trading sites such as Napster, Mp3.com and others have been destroyed by multiple lawsuits brought by members of the RIAA, who then turned around and purchased the companies at a tiny fraction of their actual worth. Today no competition remains and none would be possible under the heavy demands of the RIAA.

The bill, introduced by Reps. Chris Cannon (R-UT) and Rick Boucher (D-VA), attempts to speed and standardize royalty payments for artists, make webcasting requirements similar to on-air broadcasters', and promote nondiscriminatory music licenses.

The bill also be the first to protect consumer rights. Boucher and Cannon propose to remove restrictions on companies that want to create storage lockers including multiple copies of songs on different servers, effectively negating lawsuit that destroyed mp3.com.

Even more importantly, Boucher's legislation would let people back up copies of legally purchased music on their hard drives, transfer music to mp3 players and burn CDs with custom mixes. Finally the bill would make it easier for online retailers to let potential customers listen to music online, much as they can in a store.

"We hope this will be sort of the caffeine that will get the industry moving," Cannon said, adding that the bill was designed to "encourage lower-cost downloading of music."

Boucher said he was particularly worried that music labels could have a stranglehold over the distribution of their products.

"I'm concerned that a distribution monopoly may arise," he said.

Boucher said the bill would require companies that license their songs to a third-party company to grant similar licenses to other distributors. However, he said the bill would not require compulsory licensing. In other words, if a music label does not want to license a song, it wouldn't have to.

Digital content providers applauded the bill. "The Music Online Competition Act will ensure that consumers have Internet access to legal high-quality music, that creators get paid rapidly, and that competition, rather than lawsuits, will drive this marketplace forward," said Digital Media Association (DiMA) Executive Director Jonathan Potter, who hosted a press conference along with Cannon and Boucher to outline details of the bill.

Boucher has been an active advocate of updating copyright law to accommodate digital content. Last year, he introduced a bill that would legalize services that copy CDs, store them online, and stream songs to people who can prove they own copies of the CD. And most recently, he promised to promote changes to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that would protect people who crack copyright protection technology for legitimate uses such as research.

Not surprisingly, the RIAA bashed the bill. While it is clear to the Wizard that this bill would add billions of dollars to the major labels coffers, Hilary Rosen said that the RIAA would fight this legislation with every effort. The RIAA would much rather have absolute and total control than actually let consumers purchase and enjoy their product. Somehow the RIAA believes 100% of nothing is better than 75% of a multi billion dollar market.

The following quote defies all logic. Sadly, through the mind numbing use of gigantic financial contributions to congress, she has about 70% of all Senators and Representative believing her.

"A protracted legislative fight will not move us closer to where the music industry wants to be:delivering music to fans through a variety of different, innovative Web sites. Unfortunately, the Cannon-Boucher bill introduced today will divert time, energy and resources from achieving that goal. It is essentially a solution, a very bad solution, in search of a problem."
Hilary Rosen, RIAA President