I personally find the issues surrounding modern copyright and digital restrictions management to be very interesting and the paths we seem to be on to be very disturbing. An example of this would be
HR-4569 AKA the "Digital Transition Content Security Act of 2005". Essentially it is a bill that would attempt to limit the content that is passed over "analog" signals by requiring that the manufacturer of any equipment which uses such standard signals to adhere to a secure standard to prevent copyright infringement. Basically it is an attempt to close the so-called Analog-Hole which a person might use to say transfer digital content out through an analog signal and therefore remove any restrictions that the content had on it in the first place by forcing manufacturers to
In the case of this particular bill, manufacturers would have to adhere to the VEIL standard (nice, friendly name, right?). Of course, if you would like to know how this standard works so as to make a determination about whether or not this is a fair standard to both consumers and authors, you need to cough up 10K in order to take a look at even the decoding side of things. A good argument about this is made by Professor Ed Felten from Princeton on his blog. A sample...
After some discussion, the company helpfully explained that I could get the spec, if I first signed their license agreement. The agreement requires me (a) to pay them $10,000, and (b) to promise not to talk to anybody about what is in the spec. In other words, I can know the contents of the bill Congress is debating, but only if I pay $10k to a private party, and only if I promise not to tell anybody what is in the bill or engage in public debate about it.
Great, eh? I'm sure that there are few content developers out there at mydd, and I'm sort of curious if people have some thoughts about the slew of copyright law changes that we've seen over the years and whether or not they really few like any of them are really helpful, or more like they are designed for giant, old businesses attempting to keep their business models intact in the face of great change.
