“A similar issue came up years ago when I worked for a House of Representatives subcommittee. Someone submitted testimony for a hearing with a prominent copyright notice. Did that mean that the testimony could not be distributed or printed? No one was quite sure, but we took the easy way out. We ignored the copyright notice. The submitter never objected, preferring to influence and not anger the committee. With a DRM-restricted document, however, subsequent dissemination of that testimony could have been difficult or impossible.”

One more reason to expand and clarify fair use.

If a password had been entered, it could still be easily circumvented — thanks to Dmitry Sklyarov! Yes, six years later, the infamous Advanced eBook Processor program *still* cracks Adobe Document Security on PDFs.

There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We can reduce the focus to a soft blur, or sharpen it to crystal clarity. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear.

Perhaps this was subliminal programming designed by a cabal of IP maximalists a few decades ago, and it’s now paying off?