New, tougher copyright legislation in the works

New, tougher copyright legislation in the works
by ERIC BANGEMAN
ArsTechnica, publication date: 24 April 2006
"Known as the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2006, the legislation is currently undergoing final tweaks before being submitted to Congress. Terry Shawn, Rep. Sensenbrenner's press secretary, told me that those drafting the legislation are 'still listening to feedback from interested parties' and that the bill should be introduced in the near future.

Some highlights from the proposed legislation (which has the backing of the Bush administration) include a toughening of the DMCA which would make attempting to infringe on copyright illegal. In addition, no one would be allowed to 'make, import, export, obtain control of, or possess' hardware or software that could be used to circumvent copy-protection mechanisms. That's an expansion on the DMCA's current language, which prohibits the distribution of tools such as DeCSS that can be used to bypass copy-protection schemes."