I Put You There: User-Generated Content and Anticircumvention

This Article discusses recent rulemaking proceedings before the Copyright Office concerning the anticircumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). During these proceedings, non-institutionally affiliated artists organized to assert their interests in making fair use of existing works, adding new voices to the debate. A proposed exemption for noncommercial remix video is justified to address the in terrorem effect of anticircumvention law on fair use. Without an exemption, fair users are subjected to a digital literacy test combined with a digital poll tax, and this regime suppresses fair use.

The experience of artists (vidders) confronting the law illustrates both the perils of modern copyright lawmaking and the promise of greater artistic involvement and advocacy. Vidders and other fair users can use the rulemaking process to achieve at least partial access to the power of the law by forcing policymakers to confront the people whose speech is threatened by ever-greater copyright protection.