Many free market advocates have only fairly recently begun to realize how fundamentally anti-free market many of the big IP companies are. For example, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which they enthusiastically supported, makes it a crime to break the encryption on a DVD you have lawfully purchased even just to back it up. So if your kid likes to watch a movie enough that you fear the disk will get damaged you are literally risking a felony if you decide to make a DVD-R copy of the disk just so you can preserve your original investment. You also cannot install any modifications to DVD playing software, iTunes, etc. that would limit or break the built in digital rights management software to give you more flexibility over your own purchases.
This bill is the latest in a long line of bills aimed at fundamentally restricting our rights. Do some research on the “Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act” that was defeated in the early millennium and be amazed at what Hollywood and co. demanded beyond the already onerous DMCA. You’ll see that there is a pattern here that must only result in unrelenting political hostility to these interests from pro-property rights groups.
