Ed Felton of Princeton worries about the arms race that might come of the peer-to-peer hacking bill in Congress. As he points out this is a very non-trivial question and the bill, if enacted, might have unforeseen consequences.
What is unique about his postings is that he is making an attempt to identify likely consequences. Things like toy cash registers, answering machines and baby monitors might be illegal.
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/
The agressive stance taken by the copyright owners may only encourage real cleverness on the part of hackers and this may be motivated by something very different from piracy.
I've been following the hearings on the Bermann-Coble bill and am most surprised by the the lack of technical depth in the content industry and their inability to articulate how they would use the power granted by the bill. They admit that an arms race might take place, but have clearly not thought about what that means or where it might lead. The situation doesn't seem different from appointing an eight grade student as a judge.
An interesting and not unthinkable endgame is that the content folks would so abuse their new-found powers that a backlash would be created among the (voting) public. Bits of copyright law are set in stone, but other parts (like the duration of copyright) are not and are determined by Congress and the courts. It may be that a large backlash could force the industry to give up much of the ground that it has won over the past century.
3:01:28 PM 
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