ripley,
It's not a direct thing. It's a combination of various bad laws.
1. Copyright extensions, essentially infinitely renewable, thanks to Disney. This completely violates the original intent of copyright law, which was to protect the content creator. Now copyright protects the content "owner", not the creator, even decades after the original creator's death.
2. RIAA/MPAA sponsored legislation making it a felony to even attempt to break DRM or encryption. Not only that, possessing any equipment or software that could POTENTIALLY be used in this sort of activity is technically illegal. Like I said, it's a bad law, but there are documented cases where having (for example) a non-compiled copy of the DVD decryption code was enough evidence to justify a search/seizure warrant and prosecution.
3. Laws that make it a felony to intrude into computer systems that you don't own, even if they have no security at all. This isn't necessarily bad, except that the law has not once been enforced against corporations that have either directly searched your computer for files (again, documented proof that the industry associations do this) or who have hired unlicensed investigators to hack into networks and even individual computers (or even simple packet sniffing at universities). Again, it's a bad law and it's only enforced against individual citizens.
Sony rooted my computer AFTER this law was passed, and not one person served jail time or compensated me personally for the destruction of my property (my software installation). In fact, technically, any attempt of mine to remove the rootkit myself would be a FELONY because I would have had to bypass an encryption scheme designed to hide the rootkit they put on my computer! This is an insane situation, but that's the state of the union right now.
4. "patriot act" and other laws that allow the government to collect information on citizens without a warrant, to subpoena private information secretly under threat of imprisonment if the person served the subpoena reveals it (as in govt requiring ISPs to turn over records, emails, lists of web sites visited, etc), and the resulting wiretaps and what amounts to warrantless searches/seizures of private property. And of course, since it falls under the national security umbrella, in some cases the innocent citizen victim can't even complain or get a lawyer because it's all covered by secret provisions. Again, it's a BAD LAW because it hides internal police activity against US citizens from public oversight, and also because these same laws are being used in conjunction with examples 1-3 to directly aid the recording industry.
It's a combination of extremely bad laws. By themselves they are violations of constitutional intent and guarantees, and taken together they are an assault against the freedoms of citizens. When a law abiding citizen must submit to unmonitored, no-oversight, warrantless search/seizure where there may be no appeal and in some cases no charges filed for years (if ever), you have a police state, not a democracy or republic. The fact that the recording industry association is benefitting from all this is both unlucky and repulsively perverse.
