Michael Hiltzik of the LA Times has written a great column (free registration required) that started off with the ongoing ridiculousness of rootkit, and develops his point to the climax:
Plainly, the media companies are engaged in an all-out attack on the principle of “fair use.”
Here here!
We see it all over the place: copy protected CDs that you can't put on your iPod; copy protected downloaded music that you can't put on a competing player; excerpts can't be made of access controlled DVDs.
The one that PK has fought the hardest–government mandated DRM that would touch every device in your home even capable of playing digital video–the Broadcast Flag. At a recent hearing, when asked why Congress couldn't exempt broadcast news (for which most copying would clearly fall under fair use) and works in the public domain, the content companies had no response.
If they actually spoke their mind, their answer would be that these grand debates have zero to do with piracy. Instead, it's actually about control–not just over everything they conceive, but what consumers can do with it after legally obtaining it, and what technological innovators can do with it to make it more useful.
Thankfully, that's not how copyright works, and we work every day to ensure it.