Copyright and its attendant fair uses change, too, as the free flow of information and expression expands. For entertainment businesses unable to tolerate a consumer so empowered, the face of freedom becomes a fearful thing. Traditional entertainment businesses who are unable to become a part of human culture moving at the speed of light, feel compelled to implement stultifying "copy protections" in order to slow down and constrain the marketplace of free ideas. Failing in this, they seek to change the law, as quickly as they can... if possible before the future arrives. It is true, however, that law hastily made is bad law and, unfortunately, there is no law against bad law, so long as it is law. This is why it is so important that you hear us, today, and let us be clear:

No one can hope, seriously, to own the Internet. However, businesses will flourish as they learn to lead by getting out of the way and, for entertainment, the ability to derive income will fall to those who develop compelling tools and methods that guide and assist a global population in accessing its universal heritage of cultural artifacts. Just as surely, traditional entertainment businesses that distance themselves from so participating will hasten their own demise. For these hapless enterprises, the larger the Internet expands in its power to exchange ideas and cultural artifacts, the smaller becomes their thinking. Their seeds of their doom are planted in their desire to control what will not be controlled.

Yet, we trust that Democracy is a creation of the People, by the People, and for the People; that whosoever justly serves the People shall be fairly rewarded.

As you are surely aware, there is, today, a bill with an exactly opposite agenda. It is proposed by Representative Howard Berman (D-CA), that would allow copyright owners (anyone so calling themselves) to engage with impunity in otherwise illegal activities that include "disabling, interfering with, blocking, diverting, or otherwise impairing" the "unauthorized" distribution of copyrighted items. This proposed legislation would allow entertainment industry hackers to freely enter the private computers of consumers suspected of "possessing" copyrighted works. There is no penalty for copyright owners who are mistaken in their invasion or if they should harm a consumer's property in the process, no penalty whatsoever. Copyright owners would be free to hack anyone, anytime of the day or night. They would enjoy the protection of law and freedom from proportional liability.

Clearly, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was ill conceived when passed in 1998. The DMCA failed in its grasp of the meaning of that which it proposed to control. It is, after all, what gives the Berman bill its legal basis. In hindsight, the only benefactors of this faulty legislation are the entertainment monopolies that paid for it. And, true to form, with respect to the Berman bill, bad law is begetting worse law.