Slashdot pointed the way to This Chronicle of Higher Education Article on fair use in a world of trusted systems like Microsoft\’s Palladium.
Palladium involves new hardware and a new version Windows that could stifle the free flow of information that has come to characterize the Internet, and could give Microsoft too much control over colleges\’ own computerized information. This would give MSFT and others unprecedented control over the data on the computer, and of course, mean big expenditures on new computers and software.
Publishers could dictate that colleges/libraries had to use Palladium or else be denied access to the material. Publishers could then easily use Palladium to bar some uses of digital materials to which scholars argue that they are entitled under fair use and current laws.
With Palladium, owners of content would gain at the expense of consumers of content, including professors and students, says Eben Moglen, a professor of law and legal history at Columbia University. In fact, if Palladium were to become a widely accepted way of protecting copyrighted material, Mr. Moglen says, it would create \”a closed system, in which each piece of knowledge in the world is identified with a particular owner, and that owner has a right to resist its copying, modification, and redistribution.\”
To really understand why this is TERRIBLE be sure to check out Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace
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