"1) No person shall circumvent a technological protection measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. 2) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology product service, device, component, or part thereof that-A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological protection measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological protection measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; OR C) is marked by that person or another acting in concert with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological protection measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
Then yadda yadda yadda, there's a bit further on in an attempt to placate the ACLU:
"...D) other rights, etc., Not affected-nothing in this section shall affect rights remedies limitations or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title."
Let's start there, 1201 D): If it sounds like that last bit means nothing you're right. Since this bill creates new restrictions in A) and B) and D) does not address those new restrictions. The problem is that it's still illegal to circumvent the technologic protection, even if once you did, using the data protected therein would be fair use. And further, it's illegal to make a device or pretty much anything that would facilitate such access.
1201 A1) says that it's illegal to access a technologically protected work no matter how just the access, no matter how lame the protection.
Remember, the new fines for this stuff are real, criminal access which is for profit or exchange or just more than $1000 worth of data results in up to 500,000 fine and up to 5 years in prison. Even just a casual violation, on that is intentional but clearly does no or minimal harm to the copyright owner leaves you liable for $2500 fine, court costs, and attorney's fees. So this stuff isn't just screwing around, it's more serious than homicide.
Effects that are of concern include
The ability to lock up public domain information in a protective wrapper that carries significant fines for opening.
Protection of your cookies. That is, first cookies are themselves copywritten, but they may contain copyright control or protection measures like passwords or other access information. You can't delete them, even if there's no good faith violation of the intent, they are a technologic copyright protection measure and are therefore protected under the new draconian copyright rules.
A big concern is that cookies might contain information regarding your surfing habits, your interest in S&M teeners for example, that you might not want to remain on your hard disk.
There is an express provision in later versions of the house bill and a slightly less explicit version in the senate bill which allow the user the right to delete cookies that (in plain English) collect information about them personally if and only if the act of deleting the cookie only disables the collection of personal information, is only done to prevent the collection of information, and the package did not conspicuously warn you that it was going to be collecting information.
Not a hell of a lot of help. If the cookie has password info too, forget it, and if it didn't tell you it was collecting info, how did you know, especially since dinking around with the copyright protection measure is outlawed anyway. Catch 22.
ENCRYPTION research is also well hobbled by the bill. Let's say you get a new encryption package, clipper 4, and you want to try to break it before you trust your credit cards and love letters to your mistress to it. That would be no. It's illegal to try to circumvent a technology which controls access to a protected work. Be it the encryption program itself or your own data so protected.
The basic problem is that the act of trying is illegal, not doing a bad thing like making your own line of MicroSoft office disks on more attractive gold CDs at half price, but the act of circumventing the copyright protection itself is illegal. It's not pirating, it's being able to pirate.
Again, there are some closely worded exemptions for Crypto Research thanks to some loud voices from our community, though narrow:
It is not a crime to break the lock on a piece of data if you bought the data, the lock itself is what you're testing, you made a good faith effort to ask microsoft if they'd let you try to break their password system, and in so doing you are not infringing or breaking the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986, and if you get busted, the court is supposed to consider if you published your data for the world's edification (say, on the L0pht), you're a bona fide encryption cracker person, and you tell microsoft they're weenies as soon as you know (better).
That's a pretty narrow provision. It's not at all clear that EFF's DES Cracker would be legal under this bill. We might still think DES is good for 39 days, not 56 hours if this bill were today law.
And you can't reverse engineer stuff. Basically, unless microsoft gives you the file format for word, it's illegal to take apart word or it's files to figure it out. Therefore Microsoft has a very easy time controlling the interoperability of it's products and everyone else goes hang.
Again, there's a special exemption that might actually be OK in this case. It is again overly narrow in that it explicitly only authorizes cracking a file to reverse engineer it to achieve interoperability if so doing does not violate normal copyright law, and applies only to data files: "...the ability of computer programs to exchange information and of such programs mutually to use the information which has been exchanged."
1201 A2) says you cant develop any technology to crack codes, guess serial numbers or probe for weaknesses: that is it can neither be designed to circumvent protections, have a limited purpose other than circumventing protections (even if that was not it's original intent, presumably, let the market decide), or be something sold to circumvent technologies.
Technically your VCR is in violation, or will be. As you can make an analog copy of a DVIX flick during the first viewing and watch it as much as you like. This actually violates a host of provisions, and what's interesting is not only is the act illegal and potentially criminal if you say, trade a copy of Debbie Duz Dishes for your neighbors latest Christian coalition video, but the device is illegal. That is the VCR. This would be in contrast to a VCP - player only. People don't buy consumer VCRs with record capabilities to make their own movies, the record capability is primarily designed to circumvent copyright even though that infringement was found in Sony Vs. Universal to be, at least for personal use, fair use.
Now there is a provision which specifically exempts manufacturers from designing a device to respond affirmatively to a copyright protection scheme, i.e., you can't be required to build your VCR or you web browser with every client technology known to man to respond to copyright protection attempts, but you can still be screwed: DFC posits that if a judge finds that an equipment designer changed the value of a resistor to eliminate a response to a copyright protection scheme, that the designer could be civilly and criminally responsible. This is a judges decision, not a technology one, and we know how sensible law professionals are when asked to think about technology.
It also outlaws a lot of very useful equipment that in it's normal course of operation might disable somebody's wacky copyright protection scheme. A great example is the horrible macrovision crap, which makes your videos look like shit. It would be illegal to build a frame buffer or sync enhancer into a VCR. Or a video capture card. Which makes all decent video capture cards illegal.
In the software world, let's say you have a Newton that has a 4 bit display, it would be illegal to write a program to reduce the bit depth of images to optimize useful data since so doing would eliminate digimark copyright glyphs. Again, it's not the act that's illegal here, it's the technology, the capability, and writing specific exemptions into the back pages does nothing to remedy that basic fault.