Westlaw and LexisNexis argued that adding metadata and collecting it into their databases constituted transformative fair use. The Act was intended to provide an incentive for authors, artists and scientists to create original works, providing creators with a monopoly. The FAIR USE Act would have permanently enacted six limited exemptions to the DMCA that were previously approved by the Librarian of Congress, Dr. In July 1999, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) passed the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA, formerly UCC) 2B).
ElcomSoft's lawyers argued that the actions at issue in the case occurred outside the U.S. Department of Education, and that the law prohibited tools that consumers could use for legitimate purposes, such as blind people who converted e-books into audio files to be read aloud by their computers. The Act extended protection against the author's life plus 50 years to the author's life plus 70 years. Forty delegates signed a petition to downgrade UCITA from a “uniform law” to a “model law,” a measure that would eliminate the NCCUSL's obligation to promote the law in state legislatures.
Delegates from 160 countries considered two treaties on international intellectual property law during a Diplomatic Conference convened in December 1996 in Geneva, Switzerland. If you take so much, that the value of the original decreases significantly, or the works of the original author are appropriated substantially in a detrimental way by another, it is sufficient, from the point of view of the law, to constitute pro tanto piracy (my emphasis). The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL), the body that introduced UCITA in 1999 and continues to promote its adoption by state legislatures, met in early August 2002. UCITA is a state bill that seeks to create a unified approach to software and information licensing.
