Some of the intense criticism of the original SSSCA came from public advocacy groups like the EFF and from many comments posted by individuals on a web site that the Senate Judiciary Committee, to its great credit, made available. Strong objections also came from the technology industry, led by Intel executive Leslie Vadasz.

Yet much of the softer tone of the bill could also be attributed to AOL Time Warner, which is a media company but also a technology vendor, and which took issue with the blunt-instrument tone of the original bill, which was primarily a result of lobbying by Disney and other media companies. AOLTW's primary interest seems to be digital television: specifically, affording it the same level of piracy protection that satellite and cable TV have had for years, thereby clearing the way for more content to be transmitted over digital TV. AOLTW's interest explains the name of the new bill as well as the TV-oriented provisions in the home copying clause.

The overall effect of this bill will be, as some have described, a kick in the pants to technology vendors to standardize on DRM, which is a technology that titillates the big media companies even though it's not ready to be rolled out on such a massive scale, for many reasons.

One criterion that the various concerned parties will find difficult to resolve is that the chosen technologies support fair use. This is just impossible. Fair use is not something that can be described in advance; it is a defense to copyright infringement, and as such, it is decided in court cases rather than by any consulting any authoritative list of "uses that are fair." Anything that can't be proscriptively defined can't be embodied in a computer system, period. Therefore, there will be a real battle over whether the chosen standards compromise control (thereby benefiting the consumer, but also possibly infringers) or fair use (thereby benefiting the major media companies).

If this bill were to pass -- which, as Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has said, will not happen in this year's legislative session -- then the media companies, technology vendors, and consumer representatives will have a year to hash out DRM standards, which would then be codified into law by the Copyright Office and put into effect a year after that. If standards are not reached, then the FCC could decide either to intervene or to extend the deadline.

So even in the most aggressive circumstances, it will be over three years before anything happens in the marketplace. Even so, this bill is still ill-advised. As DRM Watch has said before, the greater media industry should take a cue from book publishers, who have worked within the free market system to come up with eBook technology that -- while not exactly taking the world by storm -- is steadily developing into a solid business for them. The CBDTPA, while less unacceptable than the SSSCA, is still protectionist legislation that shelters the media industry at the expense of the technology industry by putting media technology products in the same category as weapons and chemicals. Media piracy is wrong and should be stopped, but this bill is not the way to do it.