Earlier this month, the Entertainment Consumers Association announced that it would be boosting its lobbying efforts and hired former Entertainment Software Association attorney Jennifer Mercurio to head its government affairs operations.

　　Today the ECA announced the first issue it would tackle, and the decision is pitting Mercurio squarely against her former employer. The consumer group has come out in support of H.R. 1201, also known as the Fair Use Act of 2007, a bill seeking to revise portions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

　　If it became law, the Fair Use Act would create a variety of exemptions to the DMCA's prohibitions on circumventing antipiracy measures. The Fair Use Act would make it legal to bypass antipiracy measures in a handful of situations: for personal archiving; for researching, critiquing, or reporting on works of substantial public interest (if that is the sole reason for the circumvention); or to skip commercial or personally objectionable content. It would also create an exemption in copyright law for people who make and distribute equipment used to bypass copyright protection (such as mod chips), provided that the device "is capable of substantial, commercially significant noninfringing use."

　　"We understand and respect the careful balance that must exist between the rights of copyright owners and the rights of consumers of copyrighted material," ECA president Hal Halpin said in a statement. "We believe in the protection of intellectual property while maintaining consumers' rights, and ability to lawfully use acquired media for noncommercial purposes. Additionally, digital rights issues should be subject to private-sector interindustry resolution rather than government-imposed intervention."

　　The ESA has firmly established itself in the pro-DMCA camp, promising on its Web site that "legislative efforts to weaken the DMCA will continue to be vigorously opposed by ESA and others in the copyright community." Antipiracy issues are also at the forefront of the ESA's federal lobbying agenda, which the group spends more than $2 million on annually.

　　"We actually do support the legally defined concept of fair use," ESA representative Dan Hewitt told GameSpot. "The way that Hal is using it is actually a distortion of what fair use is, if they're using it as a defense for changing what is currently legally understood as the fair-use doctrine."