The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which took effect on January 1, 1995, is one of the three "pillars" of the World Trade Organization (WTO), standing alongside trade in goods (already represented by the GATT) and trade in services in supporting the edifice of global commerce. It establishes minimum standards for intellectual property (IP) protection for all WTO members, effectively globalizing what before had largely been the domain of domestic policy. For countries that are net importers of technological innovation,¹ the value of the agreement is questionable, and TRIPS has in fact been increasingly challenged as its consequences for developing economies have become clearer. Prior to TRIPS, developing countries had traditionally benefited from less restrictive intellectual property regimes. Many analysts point out that today’s industrial powers achieved development in part by freely appropriating the intellectual property of other countries. In the 19th century, for example, the United States imported British steam engine technology in spite of British prohibitions on export (Sell 2003: 64). We find a more contemporary example in South Korea, which, in its pre-TRIPS IP-related altercations with the U.S. over its failure to recognize U.S. copyrights and patents, self-consciously argued that it had "not yet reached a level of economic development sufficient to make intellectual property protection a cost-effective government policy" (Ryan 1998: 75) Subsequently, however, TRIPS has closed off this route to WTO members as a policy option, effectively "pulling up the ladder" on developing countries, to evoke an oft-used image.

It is now quite natural for us to think of failure to respect copyrights and patents as "piracy," the stealing of others’ "property," however intangible. Drawing upon the Lockean philosophical tradition, many contemporary legal scholars emphasize the "natural" rights of creators, noting that individuals have a "right to protection of their productive labor" (Epstein 2005). Neo-orthodox economists, in turn, see strong intellectual property protection as absolutely indispensable to technological and cultural innovation. Without strong intellectual property protection, they argue, creators and inventors would lack sufficient incentive to engage in their vocations. As suggested above, however, it hasn’t always been this way. The history of intellectual property has been characterized by a tension between conceiving knowledge and innovation as public goods and recognizing and protecting the private rights of authors and inventors (Sell 2003: 13, see Appendix for my attempt to sketch the relevant antinomies). Nor is the importance of strong IP protection as an incentive for innovation an unassailable proposition (see Boyle 2002). The contemporary TRIPS context happens to be one in which the rights of intellectual property holders are privileged over the interests of society at large, but there was a time when the other extreme commanded the consensus, when the appropriation of foreign intellectual property was seen not only as not dishonorable, or "piracy," but as the rendering of a public service (Drahos 2002: 32). The question this paper seeks to address is how we arrived from that point to where we are today, to a situation where a far-reaching, comparatively inflexible IP regime like TRIPS could be implemented globally with relatively little resistance.

In Private Power, Public Law: The Globalization of Intellectual Property Rights, Susan Sell suggests that the history of intellectual property is best understood as traversing three general phases: national, international, and global (2003: 10). In the national phase, intellectual property regulation was concerned primarily with protecting the rights of domestic authors and inventors, within a country’s borders. We find early examples of both copyright and patent activity in the Renaissance-era Italian city-states of Venice and Florence. Indeed, according to Michael P. Ryan, in 1474 authorities in Venice institutionalized a patent statute that "contained all the main features of contemporary patent law," recognizing the utility of such a statute for stimulating and diffusing innovation. These developments were short-lived, however, and when intellectual property statutes made their appearance elsewhere in Europe, it was in the form of royal favors accorded to privileged guilds, in authoritarian France as well as Elizabethan England (Ryan, 1998: 24). In England, the parliaments that succeeded the reign of Queen Elizabeth perceived how the monopolies generated by such favors damaged free trade, and thus worked to suppress them (Drahos 2004; Ryan 1998: 24). With this development, we begin to see the evolution of a more contemporary conception of intellectual property regulation as a practical means to foster technological progress and contribute to public well-being.² Here France, after its Revolution, would part ways with England philosophically, opting for a conception of "natural" or "moral" rights in statutes protecting intellectual property. This led to an essentialist, even absolutist approach in which, for example, time limits played no role in the conferring of monopolies. Ryan suggests that the decline in French innovation in the 19th century may be partially attributable to the lack of pragmatism inherent in this way of thinking, which in itself was a kind of reaction to authoritarian abuse of power (1998: 37).

The United States, which would ultimately lead the charge to impose a strong IP rights regime on the global trading system in the form of TRIPS, inherited the more pragmatic thinking of its English forebears. The U.S. Constitution Article I, Section 8 establishes the authority "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Thomas Jefferson, who as the first Secretary of State was in charge of administering patent policy "adopted a social and economic rationale for patents rather than a natural rights rationale. The patent system was needed for the public good, to induce and reward invention that was made available to the public. It was not needed to protect the ‘intellectual property’ of the individual" (Ryan, 1998: 26). The absence here of any "natural" or "moral" rights conception of intellectual property set the stage for the long history of appropriation of foreign IP by the United States. During the 1830s, an economic depression encouraged the wholesale piracy of the English publishing industry, leading British authors–most famously, an irate Charles Dickens–to petition the US congress in 1836 for protection for non-US authors, to no avail (Sell 2003: 61). During the same time, as mentioned earlier, the US was appropriating English steam engine technology with no attribution or recompense. Meanwhile, in Europe, the "national" phase was giving way to the "international" phase with bilateral deals for mutual protection of intellectual property (losses incurred by the British book trade in particular propelled this (Sell 2003: 10, Drahos 2002: 32), and ultimately with the signing of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works in 1886 and the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property in 1883. While these agreements did establish common principles for all parties to observe (among them non-discrmination, national treatment, and right of priority, which protected rights holders from unauthorized use), they also allowed for variation in such matters as scope and duration of the rights conferred, and the ability to choose what to patent and what not to patent (pharmaceuticals were a frequent exception). This permitted national autonomy in adjusting protection levels depending on level of economic development or in accordance with other policy objectives (Sell 11-12).

While the U.S. did demonstrate interest in international regulation for patents, given the exceptional innovations of its inventors such as Thomas Edison (while not an original signatory to the Paris Convention the U.S. did accede to it in relatively short order), it would not accede to the Berne Convention for one hundred years. Just as Dickens had led an effort to get the U.S. to protect foreign copyrights within the US, in the 1880s major American authors like Mark Twain and Walt Whitman tried to get the U.S. Senate to accede to the Berne Convention because they found their works were being copied overseas without authorization (Ryan, 1998: 50). They failed just as Dickens did, though an Act passed in 1891 did provide some gestures–however token–in the direction of protection for foreign authors within the U.S. A "manufacturing clause" in that Act offered copyright protection to foreign authors, but only under the condition that their works be printed in the U.S. (Drahos 2002: 33).

There was, however, a brief interruption in the United States’ relatively freewheeling intellectual property trajectory. The laissez-faire character of the Gilded Age of the late 19th and early 20th century induced a relaxation of concern about the deleterious effects of monopolies–including those conferred by the granting of intellectual property rights–on competition and the public welfare during that period. Sell relates the Supreme Court case Henry v. A.B. Dick & Co. (1912) which affirmed A.B. Dick’s right to deny purchasers of its mimeograph machine the right to use ink from other manufacturers with the machine, even though the ink itself carried no patent (2003: 65). But in the context of the 20th century, such excesses would prove to be exceptions to the rule. Sell writes, "Throughout most of the 20th century patents were considered to be monopolies rather than necessary incentives for innovation." From the date of the Sherman Antitrust Act onward (while the act was passed in 1890, it was not used extensively until Roosevelt took office at the turn of the century), and especially from 1940s through the early 1980s, patents were largely denigrated in the U.S., to such an extent that even an opponent of strong IP regimes like Sell suggests that American innovation suffered in fields like consumer electronics, for "few American businesses were willing to undertake the financial risks of commercializing new technologies" (2003: 66-67).

So what happened in the early 1980s to turn the tide? How did we move from the "national" and "international" phases of IP history, in which the U.S. (and other countries) took full advantage of their sovereign right to implement flexible IP policies domestically, to today’s "global" phase of strong, multilaterally harmonized IP rights? Given that it was the United States that first conceived and then pushed most aggressively for the TRIPS regime, answering the question requires an examination of events and circumstances in that country during this period.

To begin with, during the 1970s and early 1980s, the United States began to experience losses in its share of world trade, even as sizable trade surpluses turned to massive deficits. The challenge posed by Japan led to the development of a "policy discourse … of a United States in decline," which was at least partially attributable to Japanese appropriation of American know-how (Drahos 2004). At the same time, there was growing recognition of the importance of knowledge and innovation for the American economy, as well as the importance of foreign markets for products based on that knowledge and innovation. Starting as early as 1977 the so-called "copyright industries" grew at an annual average rate double that of economy as a whole (Ryan, 1998: 10). Furthermore, fully 40% of the value of publicly traded American companies came from intangible assets (Cukier 2005: 3).³ The stakes for the U.S. economy were accordingly high.

Sell suggests that the trend toward financial liberalization and deregulation, which began in the early 1970s with the demise of the Bretton Woods regime of fixed currency rates, also had an impact on thinking about intellectual property policy. More specifically, what was regarded by many as a "retreat of the state" during this period is more accurately seen as a "’state-market’ condominium defined as ‘a changing balance of public and private authority within the state’" (2003: 19). That is, in a context of deregulation, the state could no longer be relied upon directly to put the interests of the public at large ahead of those of private interests; privileging the latter was presumed to have "trickle-down" effects which would enhance public welfare as well. Also significant in this connection, then, was the influence of the orthodox "Chicago school" of economics on the Reagan administration, which took office in 1981. Under Reagan, "the executive agencies viewed the economic incentives provided by intellectual property rights as a legitimate means of extracting the full economic benefit from innovation" (Sell 2003: 73).

These changes in the composition of American economic activity and in economic thinking began to be felt juridically as well, when the Supreme Court stated in its ruling on Dawson Chem. Co. v. Rohm & Haas Co. (1980) that "the policy of free competition runs deep in our law … but the policy of stimulating invention that underlies the entire patent system runs no less deep" (Sell 2003: 67). A related development was the centralization of jurisdiction regarding patent cases in the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) in 1982. In 1986 the CAFC heard the landmark case Polaroid vs. Kodak, which ended in a judgment of a whopping $1 billion in damages to be awarded to Polaroid for Kodak’s infringement of its patented instant photography technology. This decision convincingly demonstrated the irrevocably pro-patent trend of the courts, and also taught business that patent infringement was no longer a viable option (Sell 2003: 71-72).

Against such a backdrop, the American government became increasingly receptive to the strong IP rights message broadcast by those with an interest in IP policy reform. Chief among those were the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which sought reform of the Paris Convention in order to impose minimum global standards for patent protection, and IBM, which, while also interested in patent reform, sought primarily to make software copyrightable, within the context of the Berne Convention (Ryan 1998: 68). These and other major multinational corporations with strong interests in both patents and copyrights, devised a strategy of pushing their case for strong IP rights through various institutional and communications channels. The Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiation (ACTPN), for example, established by the 1974 Trade Act, "institutionalized business input into US trade policy and multilateral negotiations," and was initially chaired by Pfizer CEO Edumund T. Pratt (Ryan 1998: 68). From this position, Pfizer managed to have an enormous impact in diffusing its message within government, among corporate leaders, and among the general public, by way of speeches to trade associations, editorials in major U.S. media,⁴ and contributions to major policy think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and even the left-leaning Brookings Institution. In the case of this latter strategy, of particular interest for our brief history is that given the pro-free trade bias of these groups, and given the inescapable fact that intellectual property necessarily confers a kind of monopoly, "Pfizer … had to relocate the intellectual property issue within a frame of fundamental liberal values–the individual right of property ownership; the right to a reward for labour; fairness" (Drahos 2004). The discourse of "piracy" that dominated the editorializing about the issue fulfilled a similar legitimizing function. Such a rhetorical strategy in effect turned Jefferson’s pragmatic approach, described above, on its head, restoring to respectability the more antiquated–largely French in origin–discourse about the "natural" and "moral" rights of authors and inventors.

The efforts of Pfizer and IBM (and their partners who would ultimately join them in the Intellectual Property Committee going into the Uruguay Round negotiations⁵ ) to legitimize their strong IP rights program flourished in the circumstances described above, and ultimately led to the establishment of TRIPS. The question of how developing countries were persuaded to agree to an arrangement that was clearly contrary to their interests is a topic for another paper (suffice it to say that coercion played no minor role), but the legitimacy of the regime has been increasingly called into question. In November 2001, for example, a coalition of developing countries managed to persuade the WTO to recognize the primacy of public health over IPR, and allow for flexibilities on patent law implementation with regard to pharmaceuticals. The recognition was codified in the Doha Declaration on Public Health. Perhaps of less immediate significance, but also interesting, is the emergence of Free and Open Source Software, with which the necessity of strong IP rights as a sine qua non incentive for innovation is being increasingly challenged, undermining at least one of the justifications for a strong IP rights regime like TRIPS. Despite the proliferation of so-called "TRIPS-plus" bilateral accords that impose minimum standards for IP protection that are even more stringent than those of TRIPS, if we’re optimistic, we may conclude at the very least that the future of TRIPS does not appear as secure as it once did. The pendulum of intellectual property history may have reached the apex of the current arc.

The field of information technology–particularly the rise of the Internet and a related phenomenon, Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)–provides an interesting prism through which to view contemporary ideological conflicts in the political and economic realms. Both the Internet and FOSS are powerful testimonies to the fertility of the public domain, at a moment when the existence of that domain is being challenged by an absolutist ideology that seeks to enthrone private property rights as the sole rationale for economic policy.

That these phenomena could flourish in such a hostile ideological environment is a testimony to their power. Yet the Internet and the open information infrastructure upon which FOSS rests face new legal challenges that could have profound consequences for their current state of health. Those challenges fall under two broad categories:

• Extension of intellectual property rights through patents and Digital Rights Managment (DRM) schemes
• Deregulation of telecommunications infrastructure to such an extent that telephone and cable companies will be able to discriminate as to the uses to which that infrastructure is put

In an article titled "Fencing Off Ideas: Enclosure and the disappearance of the public domain," which first appeared in Daedalus in Spring, 2002, Duke University professor of law James Boyle draws attention to how intellectual property policy has been subjected to the reductive logic of neoliberal economic orthodoxy (as manifested in the "Washington Consensus," which had been the object of much media scrutiny at the time Boyle’s article was written), which suggests that only free markets can provide efficiency and productivity. This trend is illustrated by recent efforts by various commercial interests to extend patent law both in time (as in the Sonny Bono Copyright Act) and space, into previously public realms such as "unoriginal compilations of facts" (for example, patents on gene sequences)–extending intellectual property to the "data layer" of facts rather than confining it to inventions that truly represent an innovation build upon those facts. All this is to say nothing of the increasing tendency of the U.S. Patent Office to grant patents in new technology fields that clearly fail to meet the basic test of novelty and originality.

Despite the "intellectually complacent, analytically unsound assumptions" (as Boyle puts it) of this so-called consensus, it has in fact been enshrined as unassailable dogma, such that arguments made from other perspectives are frequently rejected as "economically illiterate." (I feel obliged to point out again that the article was published four years ago–there are hopeful signs of a reevaluation of neoliberal fundamentalism, particularly in the wake of the spectacular failure of Washington Consensus-inspired policies in cases like Argentina’s economic collapse in 2001 and 2002.)

Far from representing the sanctification of a time-honored truth, neoliberal dogma in fact flies in the face of the consensus that held sway in the past. In 1918 Louis Brandeis wrote: "The general rule of law is that the noblest of human production–knowledge, truths ascertained, conceptions, and ideas become, after voluntary communication to others, free as the air to common use". The old consensus was that "ideas and facts must always remain in the public domain." Boyle writes:

From the inception of intellectual property law in the eighteenth century until quite recently, protection of the public domain–the intangible commons–was one fundamental goal of the law in most nations. In the new vision of intellectual property, however, property rights should be established everywhere: more is better.

The new consensus appears to be based largely on two assertions:

• Strong property rights are the best, if not the only, incentive for innovation and productivity.
• Government is inherently inefficient and corrupt and therefore should not interfere in the streamlined workings of free markets.

Boyle characterizes the first of these as an unbalanced assumption and suggests that the "vote of no confidence in the productive powers of the commons" it implies is mistaken. It’s not that the protection of property rights is unimportant, it’s that the new dogma does not recognize the importance of the commons as a basis for the generation of new knowledge: "Protecting the raw material of science and speech is as important to the next generation of innovation as the intellectual property rights themselves." A proper balance must be struck.

Moreover, the economic evidence simply does not warrant according property rights the exclusive position sought by some business interests. Strong DRM schemes in software and electronic devices, which often compromise fair use and other consumer rights, are based on the assumption that it’s always in the producer’s best interest to restrict copying to the maximum extent possible. In fact, there’s evidence to suggest that a "large, leaky market [in which illegal copying of content occurs] may actually produce more revenue than a small, tightly controlled market." In addition, Boyle writes, "given the known static and dynamic costs of monopolies, and the constitutional injunction to encourage the progress of science and the useful arts, the burden should be on those requesting expanded intellectual property rights to prove their value."

Most interesting from my point of view is Boyle’s presentation of FOSS as a most striking example of the "productive powers of the commons." Why FOSS, which is governed by an intellectual property regime meant to encourage–rather than discourage–copying, produces results of a quality that exceeds its proprietary counterparts (think the Linux operating system, the Apache Web server, the Firefox Web browser) is poorly understood, most especially by neoliberal ideologues. How does volunteer Boyle ventures that its global scale is key. Given that scale, a variety of motives–ranging from simple benevolence, to resume improvement, to enjoyment of solving puzzles–can be harnessed and plugged into a modular development process to produce results of exceptional quality.

What is clear is that FOSS represents "a new mode of collaborative production" that warrants further study. But to stifle it along with the open infrastructure on which it rests, would risk undermining a great source of creativity and innovation in the crucial realm of information technology. Lawmakers should protect this source by ensuring that "free" modes of production can exist along side the protection of property rights.

Skepticism about government should not expand itself to a condemnation of all public forms of collaboration in the creation of knowledge and wealth. Nor is this skepticism justified when it turns into a wholesale rejection of the notion that government can play an important role in facilitating productive activity, as it appears to in the case of neoliberal orthodoxy. In fact, as Joseph Stiglitz notes in a recent review essay in Foreign Affairs, there are cases in which government can outperform the private sector in certain areas relevant to the present discussion: "A report by the Council of Economic Advisers (conducted when I was its chair) found that the returns on public investment in science and technology were far higher than for private investment in these areas and than for conventional investment in plant and equipment." Stiglitz offers a perspective that differs sharply from neoliberal orthodoxy: "The market economy does not automatically guarantee growth, social justice, or even economic efficiency; achieving those ends requires that government play an important role."

Fortunately, certain intellectual property-related excesses seem to be coming increasingly to the attention of the public. As of this writing a "patent troll" with a dubious claim on the technology employed by the Blackberry handheld computer has take the device’s manufacturer to court, where the possibility of a cease-and-desist order threatens to throw the productivity of tens of millions of Blackberry customers into a tailspin. Additionally, large corporations like Microsoft and IBM advocate are advocating patent reforms that would ensure that patents are granted only for true innovations.

In the larger scheme of things, the wisdom of the Washington Consensus and the neoliberal orthodoxy that gave rise to it is being questioned in places like Latin America. Despite the populist or leftist cast of their campaigning and public interactions with their constituencies, Latin American leaders who have opposed themselves to the economically orthodox positions of the past have in most cases pursued moderate policies rather than returning to the protectionism of the past.

Still, there are other threats to openness on the horizon. O’Reilly’s Andy Oram recently commented on a new legal initiative called "Webcaster’s rights" that would erode the principle, currently in force, of "fair use" of Web content by legislating that the original broadcaster of a piece of Web content have full control over its use. By default, it would be illegal to retransmit it without first getting permission from the Web site that first broadcast it. Currently the US is pursuing the ratification of this policy globally in the context of WIPO (the World Intellectual Property Organization).

Finally, the Nation, among others, has reported on the potential privatization of the Internet in the wake of the dismantling of FCC regulation that that formerly required phone companies to operate as "nondiscriminatory networks (technically known as ‘common carriers’)." Under such a scheme, companies offering broadband service might throttle bandwidth in favor of customers downloading "premium content" (surely bandwidth-intensive video and audio) for an extra fee. The potential for revenue sharing under this model could compel major Web sites like Google, Amazon and Yahoo to support this arrangement.

These companies are furthermore pushing to make it illegal for communities to create their own local wi-fi networks that connect to the Internet.

AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre was quoted as saying: "Why should they be allowed to use my pipes? The Internet can’t be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment, and for a Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts!"

What’s most interesting about such a remark is the extent to which the question of to what extent private property rights serve the public good no longer even enters into the debate–the assumption is that the private concern’s right to maximization of profits is absolute.

Given the unorthodox style in which I’ve lived the last 4 years of my life–forsaking a lucrative and stable job stateside in favor of pursuing entrepreneurial and educational opportunities (with varying degrees of success) abroad, specifically in Latin America–I’ve felt a bit more freedom than I otherwise would have to spend most of my computing time in the idealistic world of Free Software. While I’d long been a Linux dabbler, I’ve now become a full-time devotee of Ubuntu Linux, and, with the one exception noted below, have never felt poorer for havng left behind proprietary alternatives.

But considering my probable reentry into the mainstream workforce at the end of this year, and the likelihood of my having to work in a proprietary computing environment again, I thought it would probably be a good time to reacquaint myself with Microsoft’s offering in the field of operating systems. Maybe I’m softening in my old age, or maybe it’s the fact that desktop Linux has matured to the point where it no longer suffers from an inferiority complex (at least compared to Windows; OS X may be a different story), but I’d actually even started to entertain the idea that maybe the Windows and Linux approaches were simply two means to the same end, that perhaps the two offered divergent strengths that in the end complemented one another.

After all, I actually enjoyed working with Windows 2000 in my last job as a Visual Basic and ASP developer. And I continued to rely on the original Windows 2000 installation on my dual-boot IBM ThinkPad T23 for viewing DVDs on my TV using the machine’s S-video port. (I simply don’t have the geek firepower to get this working properly in Linux with my T23’s SuperSavage video adaptor, despite marginal success with a patched version of the s3switch utility.) To get current, I bought a shrink-wrapped Windows XP CD, license and all.

Lately, anti-Microsoft invective has shifted from expression of a generalized contempt for Microsoft’s monopolistic practices and the technical inferiority of its operating system and development methodology to complaints about its role in the promotion, along side other large media concerns and software companies, of "draconian DRM" (digital rights management) policies and technologies. While sympathetic to this line of argument, I’d generally written off the rabid anti-DRM crew as a bunch of overreactive Stallmanites. Whatever the ethical or legal questionability of the companies’ DRM practices, surely it wouldn’t affect my day-to-day use of the products I’d paid for and had a legal right to use.

I had no idea how bad it had gotten.

The first thing I did after upgrading to Windows XP, was to rehabilitate the installation to perform the main task for which I was still relying upon Windows: DVD viewing. But upon reinstalling PowerDVD (never mind the fact that I have a legally licensed CD, but had lost the "product key" and had to enter the seedy nether world of "warez" sites simply to get another product key that would let me use the software I had purchased) and the most recent ThinkPad T23 video drivers, I discovered that something I used to be able to do–watch my (originally purchased) set of 24 DVDs on my TV set through the S-video connection while running PowerDVD on Windows 2000–now caused an error window to pop-up indicating that the "copy protection" on the DVD would not permit viewing on an external display.

So much for PowerDVD. I wish I could get back the money I spent on this product back as well the time I wasted trying to reactivate it with a new product key, since I won’t be using it again.

Interestingly, the version of Microsoft’s own Windows Media Player running on my machine is not crippled by this "bug", but I discovered when I went to try to run a copy of Super Size Me, licensed for viewing in Latin America and rented from the corner video store in my neighborhood in Buenos Aires, Argentina, that I had finally used my last alotted "region" change, and that my DVD player was now permanently set to "Region 1."

Here it seems necessary to point out to companies who implement such DRM schemes the existence of such modern phenomena as "portal electronic devices" like "notebook computers," as well as "international travel." For what possible reason should I be prohibited from viewing a DVD that I rent in this country for the purpose of viewing it on a device that I had legally brought into this country for personal use?

When the first instinct of software and media vendors to whom you’ve paid hundreds of dollars for licenses to use their products is to treat you like a criminal, you know that there’s something fundamentally wrong with their model, that maybe it’s time to stop using their products entirely. If their business model is to alienate their customers to the point where they lose them entirely, they’re succeeding brilliantly, at least in my case.

What’s more disturbing, however, is that the only workable solution I found–to download and use the open source VLC Media Player–is probably itself illegal according to the terms of the ill-conceived Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), at least if I were using it within the borders of the United States. The effect of these companies’ policies is not only to turn customers into non-customers, but, potentially, into criminals.