Tech trade assoc wants to ban scary copyright warnings

The Computer and Communications Industry Association (Microsoft, Red Hat, Google, Yahoo, et al) have filed a complaint with the FTC alleging that the copyright warnings in books, DVDs, movies, and sportscasts materially misrepresent the law, giving short shrift to fair use and other user rights in copyright. They're asking for an injunction banning rightsholders from using this kind of intimidating warning.

For now, all the CCIA wants is an injunction barring rightsholders from using overly-broad warnings. "Our ultimate goal is to expose this for what it is and to make it clear to people that their rights are being violated," explained Ward. "We'll get to the issue of whether fines are necessary down the line."

Indeed, the complaint asks the FTC to order the organizations named in the complaint to stop misrepresenting US copyright law, "including but not limited to consumers' fair use rights." The CCIA also wants the FTC to force the NFL, MLB, and studios to come up with a plan to keep these sort of mispresentations from happening again as well as a model copyright notice that is "accurate, balanced, and consistent with all provisions of the US Copyright Act and Federal Trade Commission Act." Lastly, the CCIA would like to see those named in the complaint forced to foot the bill for fair use education. (Maybe they can pay for Fair Use Day celebrations next July.)

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