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I think we need a bailout for the disenfranchised music people. The government should buy new DRM-filled music for them with taxpayer's money. After all, isn't that the moral thing to do?

Seems the "right and proper" thing to do, after watching the U.S. Government agree to pay off Wall Street's "American Excess Card" payments, would be for the U.S. government to buy all of the DRM-ed music from the consumers, without much more than a "slap on the wrist" penalty to the consumers, and let them continue to make DRM mistakes with their new money.

Flawed analogy. My proposal was to find a way to chip away at the criminal portions of the DMCA (saving the government money and not costing them a dime) to allow customers to directly pop into the DRM-free camp without any financial hit. Probably a net benefit to the producers as well, discouraging people from getting disenfranchised to the point where they revert to piracy. That said, it'll probably never happen anyway - I imagine it'd be difficult to tack anything on when just working on synchronizing previously passed House and Senate resolutions for a final bill. There was talk about getting the FAIR USE act tacked in as an ammendment, but it didn't include the exemption mentioned above. Given the timing, if it is possible to squeeze anything in, it might be the perfect thing to generate enough outrage to prompt its support.

Sean Crago Kathmandu