PERFORM Act introduced
William Patry has this post on the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings yesterday on S. 2644, the Platform Equality and Remedies for Rights Holders in Music Act of 2006.
The text of the bill along with Senator Feinstein's introductory remarks are posted on the DiMA site.
According to Feinstein, the bill is intended to:
"Create Rate Parity -- all companies covered by the government license created in Section 114 would be required to pay a 'fair market value' for use of music libraries rather than having different rate standards apply based on what medium is being used to transmit the music; and
Establish Content Protection -- all companies would be required to use reasonably available, technologically feasible and economically reasonable means to prevent music theft. In addition, a company may not provide a recording device to a customer that would allow him or her to create their own personalized content library that can be manipulated and maintained without paying a reproduction royalty."
Fred von Lohmann says: "Among its provisions is one that would condition the statutory license for webcasting on the use of DRM-restricted formats, which effectively would ban MP3 and Ogg streaming", see EFF Deep Links.
We are waiting for the Ponderous Acronym Elimination Act of 2006 to be introduced. But PAEA doesn't resonate, unfortunately.
Cathy Kirkman is a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in Palo Alto, California. Her practice focuses on intellectual