The problem with all this is two fold. First there is what you pointed out:
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Originally Posted by BobR
Currently, the laws are heavily in favor of the content owner, and those acting in accordance with many common views of fair use are being treated as criminals.
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I'll go so far as to say that the laws are
way out of balance.
Now, the content owners are trying to add DRM to their content and this DRM has little to do with protecting their copyright.
This DRM they are trying to impose has to do with seizing rights that they do not have - nor have they ever had. This DRM is an attempt to lock customers into proprietary formats to control what users can do with the content.
This is like going to the store, buying a book, and finding out when you got it home that the book cannot be read in the bedroom. It's a living room book only and when you try to take it into the bedroom, the book will not open (or the pages become blank). Worse yet, over night the book you paid for gets an automatic update so that you can only read it in the living room between 8 and 10 pm GMT.
This isn't too far a stretch as eBook readers start to come out. I can see the content owners trying to put such horribly strict DRM on eBook readers.
Content owners cry "But if we don't have DRM, we won't produce content." That's a "Wolf!" cry if I ever heard it. Content that sits in a vault, unsold, unviewed is worthless. If they want to take their content and go home, that's up to them. We'll buy their content for pennies on the dollar when they declare bankruptcy.
For me, I refuse to buy DRMed content (well, DRMed content where I can't break the DRM). But that's getting harder and harder to do as content companies strong arm product companies to produce products that conform only to proprietary "standards".
A good example is a recent MP3 player I purchased - the iRiver H10 20GB.But normally it only supports Microsoft's proprietary and brain-damaged Media Transport Protocol. However, it supports USB mass storage in an emergency mode - so it has the ability to do it. But iRiver made it so you can't really turn it on.