The DMCA . . . tyrannical enough yet?

We need a rougher, tougher DMCA because, of course, digital copying is the greatest threat facing our civilization. Tucents summarizes the most recent anti-consumer aspects:

• expanded restrictions on software

that'll stimulate new businesses

• federal police with more wiretapping and enforcement powers

just look at how responsible they are with the powers they have today

• a new federal crime of just trying to commit copyright infringement punished by 10 years in prison (even if the copy attempt fails)

DRM software that dials 911 when you use it on a protected disk?

• restrictions saying nobody may "make, import, export, obtain control of, or possess" software or hardware that can be used to bypass copy-protection devices

Give up your VCR, and what about Windows? Can't use a computer to make a copy without the OS

• legal protection for computer hacking like Sony's rootkit.

because hacking a few million computers is OK if you're an RIAA member

• 20 years in prison for excerpting too much of a news article on your web site

keeping the punishment at an appropriate level for the crime

• civil asset forfeiture penalties for anything used in copyright piracy following the rules established by federal drug laws

lose your computer even if you're innocent. But that's OK, these laws have never been abused, right?

The Cranky Insomniac responds:

So, like the drug "warriors" before them, the folks behind the DMCA — the recording and entertainment industries, with the support of their stooges in DC — have decided that what's needed are harsher laws with stiffer penalites. For whatever reasons — sheer stupidity is my guess — they don't seem to realize that this will further alienate their potential consumers and most likely do next to nothing to prevent all the Dread Pirate Roberts out there from continuing their plundering and pillaging.

The DMCA is the tool the music and movie industries have decided to use to initially penalize their own customers and in the long term to penalize all consumers — whether they make copies of digital media or not. You'd have to believe that everyone in your target audience is a potential or actual criminal to back this sort of draconian law: because the end result is to make it that way.

I don't make copies of movies or download them from the internet, but the more crap they include at the beginning of the disc, the more likely I am to try to fast-forward past it . . . and they are trying to make it more difficult for me to do this. I've paid them money for the movie, yet they're still trying to force me to watch extraneous crap . . . and making it more and more likely that I'll either make a copy of the disc (omitting the extraneous crap for myself) or download the movie from the net with the crap already excised. I'm not quite at that point, but every time I find more stuff I can't fast-forward through, I'm that much closer to looking up tools to allow me to permanently avoid it.