I have sent the following letter to Pennsylvania Senators, and I urge you to do the same if you are interested in maintaining “fair use” rights to home recordings. See the EFF article for complete details on how California Senator Diane Feinstein seems to be in the pocket of the recording industry, actually working to take away your “fair use” rights. Like an evil bloodsucker, this bill just keeps rising from the dead, so we need to kill it again (Californians - let Sen. Feinstein know you’re watching what she’s doing, and that you vote!):

As a voting constituent with a great interest in technological innovation and the future of the Internet, I am writing to ask you to vigorously oppose S.256, the PERFORM Act, introduced in the Senate by Senator Feinstein. While I have the greatest respect for Sen. Feinstein, in this case she is serving the “special interests” of the media conglomeraates and performing a gross disservice to the American people and to Pennsylvania citizens.

As you may know, this bill is an attempt by the recording industry to cure short term contractual issues by placing blanket restrictions on technology, curtailing the right of Pennsylvania consumers to noncommercial recording in their own homes, and mandating their own restricted radio streaming standards. This bill will go far to destroy the current “fair use” provisions of the law, something the recording industry is desperate to see dissapear. The industry uses the excuse of “piracy,” but they are more interested in using the law to force the American public to pay for EVERY USE of any recording, turning any “purchase” of music and spoken-word recordings into an unacceptable short-term “lease.”

This particular bill would forbid future digital radio receivers that allowed “automated recording, or playback based on specific programs, time periods, or channels as selected by the user” in digital radio — even though such abilities are unrelated to online piracy and have been a source of innovation in other media, such as TiVo and other digital video recorders. The bill would also for the first time compel Internet radio stations — individuals and companies broadcasting streaming music online — to abandon the established MP3 standard in preference for a narrow selection of government-permitted, incompatible, proprietary formats. Our modern copyright law has always avoided playing kingmaker with technology. The PERFORM Act would break this important principle and create a very dangerous precedent.

Last year, the Consumer Electronics Retailers Coalition called PERFORM “strictly a bill to limit the options of honest people.” Musician Todd Rungren told the Senate Judiciary committee that it was “yet another futile attempt to turn back the clock” by the music industry.

I STRONGLY urge you to defend my right to home recording, and the freedom of technologists and musicians to innovate new, profitable technological tools - I should note I am a fifty-year-old who has been voting since the mid-1970’s, in the case you mistakenly believe only younger people are concerned about the industry’s attempts at infringing the American consumer’s “fair use” rights. Please vigorously oppose the PERFORM Act.

Sincerely,

Charles Summers, III