I think it's ironic that the Academy Awards directed YouTube to remove all clips from the weekend show at the same time that Rep. Rich Boucher (D-VA.) and John Dolittle (R-CA) introduced a bill designed to chip away at the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

Here's some perspective on both actions.

The website for the Oscars is a joint venture between the Academy and Disney-owned ABC.com. The offending clips on YouTube did not appear on the corporate website. The corporation reportedly has no plans to produce and sell a DVD of the 2007 Academy Awards show. It even plans to remove the few clips it has on its website, to "whet people's appetite for next year's show." Read that last sentence again. Care to explain that logic?

Cut from the left coast to the right coast. Also on Tuesday, Boucher and Doolittle introduced FAIR USE (Freedom And Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship Act of 2007). They introduced similar bills, designed to amend the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, in the last two Congressional sessions. From Boucher's press release:

The fair use doctrine is threatened today as never before. Historically, the nation's copyright laws have reflected a carefully calibrated balanced between the rights of copyright owners and the rights of the users of copyrighted material. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act dramatically tilted the copyright balance toward complete copyright protection at the expense of the public's right to fair use... The FAIR USE Act will assure that consumers who purchase digital media can enjoy a broad range of uses of the media for their own convenience in a way which does not infringe the copyright in the work.

However, he goes on to say:

The FAIR USE Act differs fundamentally from H.R. 107 and H.R. 1201, as proposed in the 108th and 109th Congresses, respectively, by Representatives Boucher and Doolittle. In an effort to address the concerns expressed by content owners, the FAIR USE Act does not contain provisions which would have established a fair use defense to the act of circumvention [of DRM systems].

The justaposition of these two news items reflects the societal disruption resulting from digitization, which frees most cultural content (words, pictures, sound) from the scarcity lock that has allowed firms to reap monopoly-like rents. The very audience that Hollywood says it covets most -- those under 25s -- are the very people Hollywood alienates with actions like these. Somebody send those execs a copy of The Perfect Thing, Wikinomics, and The Long Tail.