http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45548,00.html Rep: Give Fair Use a Fair Shake By Declan McCullagh (declan@wired.com) 12:55 p.m. July 25, 2001 PDT WASHINGTON -- Rep. Rick Boucher wants to spring a Russian programmer from jail. Boucher, a maverick Virginia Democrat, is hoping to rewrite a federal law that led FBI agents to arrest Dmitry Sklyarov in Las Vegas, Nevada, last week on copyright felony charges. "It's a broad overreach to have a person arrested under the federal criminal laws simply because they made software that circumvents a technological measure," Boucher said. Boucher said his office will draft a bill to be introduced later this year. The criminal law in question is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which was obscure enough when Congress enacted it in 1998, but has emerged as the one of the most important and far-reaching technology regulations. Sklyarov is charged with trafficking in a program to bypass Adobe's copy protection for e-books, a federal felony under the DMCA. "I think the current case adds impetus to the growing effort to fashion an amendment to the DMCA that would restore the classic balance (of fair use rights)," Boucher said. That promises to be anything but a trivial task. Leaders of the House and Senate subcommittees that oversee copyright law said Tuesday that they would not consider any changes to the DMCA. [...]