tyranny of the content providers Famous plagiarist Joe Biden, with a newfound taste for Hollywood money, has recently taken a distressingly hardline pro-IP stance:

Biden's new bill would make it a federal felony to try and trick certain types of devices into playing your music or running your computer program. Breaking this law--even if it's to share music by your own garage band--could land you in prison for up to five years. And that's not counting the civil penalties of up to $25,000 per offense. "Say I've got an MP3 collection and I buy a new nifty player from Microsoft that only plays watermarked content, and I forge the watermark to allow my legal MP3 collection to play," says Jessica Litman, who teaches intellectual property law at Wayne State University. "It is certainly the case that if I pass that around, I could be trafficking (in violation of the law)."

And unlike the slightly-more-draconian Hollings bill, this one has a disturbingly reasonable chance of passing. It's a reminder that my anti-IP crusade, quixotic as it may be, anticipates a very likely "tyranny of the content providers." Update: Looks like InstaPundit beat me to this one. Oh well.