Digital Millennium Copyright Act
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act was passed in 1996 in order to satisfy the WIPO. The WHO? No, the WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization. The who? Enough. The WIPO is an agency of the United Nations (UN) to which the sovereign nation of the United States is a permanent member. "In principle, only sovereign states can become UN members, and today all UN members are fully sovereign states. ". So if the United States is a sovereign nation, why does our federal government pass Acts in order to satisfy the UN, even though this Act is not something that the majority of Americans approve of? Our federal government is supposed to represent we the people. We the people don't want the DMCA, and the significant number of people who apparently violate the DMCA every day should be a clear sign that we don't want this legislation. The DMCA doesn't just criminalize the act of accessing copyrighted material, it also criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, even if you don't actually access something that is copyrighted.

Many software engineers, including myself, as well as technology workers and users believe that the DMCA is anti-competitive by design and gives copyright holders the legal power to limit free speech and prevent open research, in addition to making the use of certain software and hardware illegal, or potentially illegal, by design. Proponents of the DMCA, namely those politicians who stand to benefit directly or indirectly, claim that the DMCA is needed in order to prevent copyright infringement, for example, "illegal" music and movie downloads, however, the DMCA has not prevented such activities and the number of "illegal" downloads has not decreased. The DMCA, at best, has only caused many small businesses to fail as they are faced with DMCA violation notices, has only caused individuals sharing information, the same way you might permit a friend to look at a book you purchased, or borrowed from a library and has allowed legal entities to profit at the expense of the consumer.

Furthermore, many private websites owned by individual tax payers or small private companies are often sent "DMCA Take Down Notices" threatening legal action regarding some content on a server, be it a music file, a photo, a scanned image or a car club's calendar including their own pictures of their own Ford Mustangs, printed at their own expense. In most cases, it is simply not possible, affordable or practical, for an individual to read and understand their rights under the DMCA, then understand their legal option and this gives copyright holders, or supposed copyright holders, a powerful and unfair edge in the market.

The Broken Patent System
In an ideal, open, capitalist, democratic, free market economy, something we're supposed to have here in the United States, you and I would have the opportunity to research, design, produce and profit from an invention we create. However, our broken patent system allows "patent squatters" to both profit from individual innovation, and take away the incentives, and opportunities, to invent. Imagine that you are a software engineer and you have a great new idea for some piece of software. You design and write your software and off you go selling your product, hopefully making some money. You're not a lawyer and you are busy writing software, so you don't bother to check out the patent system, you just know that there is no known software that does what you want to do, or at least no known published and marketed software. If you're "unlucky", your software won't be purchased by anyone and you'll be back to that cube job in the basement. Or, if you're "unlucky", some lawyer will file a patent infringement lawsuit against and claim they own the patent to your software, but in many cases, such companies do not employ a single software engineer, never wrote a single line of code for a program, and have no idea how to actually create such software. Moreover, you might use a phrase like "But It Now!" and even create a "button" on your website to allow people to purchase your product, and if you do create such an obvious "button" using obvious language, you might be contacted by a patent lawyer because, well, that is also patented. Ideally, the patent law would protect people who actually create something, not some lawyers who manipulate the legal system. I don't have the solution, as I understand the intent of the patent system, but clearly the system needs to be revamped.

The Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act
The Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act (DMCRA) is a bill already introduce into the house which aims to address some of the problems with the DMCA. It doesn't solve all of the problems with the DMCA and it doesn't address the problems in the patent system, but having read the summary of the act, it is a start in the right direction.

The RIAA/MPAA vs you
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) are two groups that are "non-profit" associations of "for-profit" companies that claim to protect artist's rights, at the expense of you and I, the consumers. However, many artists, most recently the band Radiohead and Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails (NIN) fame, have broken contract with these labels and organizations as they, and many others claim that these organizations do not fairly pay and represent the artists. In general, like patent squatters, these organizations seek to attack individuals for their own profits by manipulating the legal system. However, because of the control such organizations have within their respective industries, new artists who do not already have a known "brand" would find it difficult to get airtime on a radio station or television time if they were to release material without going through the RIAA/MPAA. The stronghold of these organizations and unfair business practices are effectively the same as using "strong arm tactics".

So should the federal government be involved in private industry or not?
In general, the federal government should NOT be involved in private industry, however, the very creation of the DMCA, or the DMCRA, is the government's involvement. The DMCA does not protect the consumer, it protects the legal entities. If you began to distribute blank sheet of paper to people, and don't think that people will begin to make their own uses for that paper, be it for writing notes, making paper airplanes or rolling it into the shape of a ball, then you would be mistaken. It is your responsibility as the creator, and distributor, of that paper to protect it from a use you don't authorize. If, and when, someone determines that they can manipulate your product, their manipulation alone is an "innovation" that should be protected, and they should not be penalized for your failure to protect your invention. Again, if you were an alien, and you crash land on this planet, and you had never seen a wheel before, it would be pretty obvious to you how to create your own wheel, and it would be the wheels original "inventor" who failed to protect the design or product.

Of course, all of this is nothing new. George Selden patented the automobile long before Ford, Daimler or anyone else, but George Selden didn't have a factory, nor did George Selden have any idea how, or intentions, to build his patented automobile. It's an old problem, we're not going to solve the "problem" this week, unless of course, we simply get the government out of the business of the consumer/creator relationship and let the consumers/creators battle it out. In the short run, the consumer might "steal" some works of some creators. In the long run, some individuals will have to innovate new methods of protecting their creations, leading to both smarter consumers, more private research and a break from the mafia like tactics some corporations use against consumers. Again, let's be honest, you and I probably won't go create an iPhone, maybe a company will, but then either Apple, or this other company, will have to battle each other to get the consumers to purchase their product. If said new company can design, create, produce, market and sell their iPhone Clone cheaper than the iPhone, then why shouldn't they produce their product? If Apple sells a hardware product and it has some software on it, then the consumer owns both the hardware and software. If Apple can't figure out how to seal their iPhone and prevent an innovative individual from accessing the details of their hardware or software, then Apple is at fault, not the innovator who "hacked" the iPhone.