Good tidings from the digital music hearings currently going on in the
United States, with the government not
buying the recording industry's story, and
threatening to get medieval on them.
The DMCA architect, Senator Orrin Hatch (himself a best-selling musician
on that peculiarly middle-American institution, the Christian charts),
does not seem to have much sympathy for the content pimps of the recording
industry.
If any legislation arises from this hearing, it will not be the feared ban on
"insecure" music encoding formats or peer-to-peer file-sharing, but new
extensions of fair use and laws forcing the recording companies to license
their material more openly. Though that's just from the hearing; surely the
RIAA will attempt to add a MP3-criminalisation rider to something like the
Schools Milk Appropriation Bill at some stage...