Congressman Rick Boucher wants to trade the Broadcast Flag for fair use rights
Congressman Rick Boucher (D-Va.) is one of the few friends us geeks have up on Capitol Hill, and he's just written a column for CNET essentially offering to give the MPAA and the television networks the Broadcast Flag in exchange for easing up a bit and giving consumers back some of the fair use rights that were stripped away when the DMCA was passed several years ago. It's sort of a sucky deal when you think about it — we'll accept this lame thing if you'll give us back something you shouldn't have stolen in the first place — but given how crazy backwards the rest of Congress is about this stuff, at this point we just might have to take what we can get.
