What of the rights of those who actually own the rights? "Free market" doesn't mean everything is free or should be available for the cost of duplication and shipping.
Good point! However, as one here who IS a content creator and one who has taken people into a legal battle over copyright theft, I feel this way about the DMCA-
We have a great copyright law already with adequate Fair Use provision. The question should be asked- Just because a copyright is in digital form, why does the law need to be different and why make Fair Use illegal because the content is digital? If I distribute my work on a betacam SP master, a VHS tape, or on 16mm film, it may be copied by anyone who operates under the restrictions of Fair Use. But if I burn the work to a DVD, it automatically makes it illegal for others from copying the work restricted by the Fair Use provision.
No one is arguing that the Fair use means the copyright holder lose his rights. Fair Use was put into place to permit specific uses of copyrights without the need to get permission from the copyright owner, nor the need to pay for those rights. These specific uses are 1. Personal use, (under same household and no theatrical presentation) 2. News use 3. Educational use by recognized educational institutions. This means that if you copyright an analog work, you understand that it has no protection under fair use.
Note that the original Copyright law makes no distinction about how the copyright is formed or even uses the word analog or digital. A song is protected whether it is in sound waves or coded on paper sheet music or played with a flute or sung by human voice. But if it is encoded to 1's and 0's then it receives a special no Fair Use protection.
Personal use forbids distribution of the content to others outside the household. News and Educational allows distribution following certain guidelines.
No Fair Use may distribute for direct sale or commerce, whether or not there is a profit.
I don't see the need to restrict the above Fair Use just because the content is in digital form. This was a law poorly written (IMO) to circumvent the ease with which a user could copy using automated personal computerized process that can make a clone or close exact copy that the copyright holder was not able to lock out. ( The old key for every lock logic). So they simply made Fair Use illegal if in Digital form.