This was taken from LockerGnomes daily GnomeSOAPBOX and is well worth the read.
A lot of people are excited about the SSSCA, a bill being put forward by a couple of U.S. senators on behalf of large corporate backers in the software and music industry, which would make it a crime (not just an actionable civil matter) for end users to copy certain kinds of information on their computers, or even attempt to read or play it, if the copyright holder didn't want it used that way. In company with the DMCA, this bill could conceivably make it illegal even to use software that COULD be used to accomplish that purpose (including open-source OS's, such as Linux).
If this bill were to be signed into law, it would represent the first such restriction on the individual use of intellectual property (at least in a Western democracy) since the Middle Ages. The medieval church, which was the primary institution of its day, comparable to the large corporations of the industrial era in its ability to influence or even dictate the policies of governments, controlled what was read and who got to read it. All books were held in church libraries and copied only by monks, and it was necessary to take religious orders even to learn how to read. We call it the Dark Ages. Fortunately, culture was being kept alive by the Moslems.
View: GnomeSOAPBOX (scroll down to read)
View: Stop Policeware Eligible signatories: American citizens
