News.com published an article about the new digital copyright bill, which is currently being prepared by Congress. According to the information from News.com the new bill is nothing else but the DMCA on steroids. Instead of scaling down the controversial DMCA, as was requested many times by computer scientists, security experts and technology folks in general, the Congress wants to give more freedom to law enforcement structures in “fighting the IP crimes”. And, of course, this bill is already widely supported by RIAA and others.
I really do hope that this bill will not go through. Generally speaking, there is nothing to be afraid of: the digital future is coming anyway, whether the lawmakers want this or not. Looking at the trends and the general direction of the development of the “technology world”, one can easily see that the current copyright-based business models do not belong to that future.
What this bill might change, however, is the price we would have to pay for entering this brave new world. And it depends on the lawmakers whether the road to the Tomorrow will be an easy and fast one, or bloody and hard one. I hope (though, probably, without any reason) that the intelligent and educated people in Senate will overcome the narrow-minded conservatives, and that the money would be spent on development of the new business models rather than on enforcing a law which protects old ones.
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