a great, great bit of writing about the DMCA via Cory at Boing Boing today. Read the original at Electrolite, by Patrick Nielsen Hayden.

[…] It’s obviously unconstitutional. It’s obviously unfair.

[…]

And you may think you’re just defending yourself against smartass hackers who pirate your texts on Usenet. But when you rearrange the basic legal structures that undergird society, it’s not actually likely that the consequences are going to be limited to those you happen to find satisfactory. We are trading an old civic and civil model of intellectual property for a strange, ruthless new thing, red in tooth and claw. And its next victim won’t be hapless hackers who pirate Harlan Ellison stories on Usenet. Its next victim will be people like you. And you. And you.