I agree. There is a lot more fairness in physical space that doesn't translate to cyberspace primarily due to the implementation details of computers and networks. Whereas products and machines built in the real world are primarily protected by things like patents and trade secrets, practically everything in the digital world falls under uber-restrictive copyright protections, since the "creative" work of code and its compiled/interpreted derivatives is the language by which everything is implemented.
Similarly, concepts like the "first sale doctrine" are becoming less applicable with digital delivery, as it's impossible to identify a "hard copy" of something that may be eligible for resell. That completely obliterates the secondary market for many products that are accessed through computers, including software, games, movies, and books.
The CFAA essentially allows network operators to arbitrarily make someone a felon overnight. Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz is the most prominent example of this; his criminal prosecution under the CFAA (for scraping publicly-funded research papers out of a database) was pending when he committed suicide.
We badly need digital rights reforms, but since major companies have been allowed to profit handsomely off these shifts and since they find it rather convenient to bully small innovators with serious legal threats, which are easy to craft in this climate, it doesn't seem that anyone is making this a priority.
Similarly, concepts like the "first sale doctrine" are becoming less applicable with digital delivery, as it's impossible to identify a "hard copy" of something that may be eligible for resell. That completely obliterates the secondary market for many products that are accessed through computers, including software, games, movies, and books.
The CFAA essentially allows network operators to arbitrarily make someone a felon overnight. Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz is the most prominent example of this; his criminal prosecution under the CFAA (for scraping publicly-funded research papers out of a database) was pending when he committed suicide.
We badly need digital rights reforms, but since major companies have been allowed to profit handsomely off these shifts and since they find it rather convenient to bully small innovators with serious legal threats, which are easy to craft in this climate, it doesn't seem that anyone is making this a priority.