It probably won't be remembered as such, but last week was truly significant for the technology industry. The proposed FAIR USE Act was unveiled, and while many media outlets were busy praising it, the fact is that true DMCA reform has been abandoned. Despite this, the RIAA came out swinging, and trashed the bill.

A conversation I had Friday with a mainstream media journalist on the topic really surprised me because the RIAA's argument against the bill isn't being fully appreciated here. As I tried to explain to this journalist, the RIAA is trying to preserve protections for its interests that run counter to how a civil society embraces freedom and responsibility. Just as bad, the RIAA is making the fatal mistake of treating its honest customers like criminals who have to be supervised, while their staunch position does nothing to stem actual piracy.

In a nutshell, the RIAA argues that the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause cannot be nuanced to allow for circumvention in special cases (like fair use), because if any circumvention is allowed, then the cat's out of the bag and piracy shall reign supreme. DMCA scholars often spar over whether or not the blanket prohibition against circumventing access controls truly applies to fair use, but I think it's quite clear what the RIAA and the content industry thinks: the DMCA makes circumvention illegal, period. Does this all-or-nothing principle sound familiar? If you're thinking of Prohibition in the United States, you're right on the money.

Once upon a time powerful people in our society decided that alcohol could not be trusted in the hands of the common person. If some folks can't be responsible with it, no one should have access. You know how it played out: a large underground opened up, alcohol still flowed, but lots of people got caught up in a horrible situation that ruined lives, made cities unsafe, and punished millions of responsible people. But let's be 100% clear: alcohol didn't vanish, and more than one scholar will tell you that Prohibition did more for alcohol than the marketers could have accomplished themselves.

The RIAA is like the Prohibitionists of old. In their view, the law cannot allow for something completely reasonable such as legal circumvention because it could be abused. Millions of people are thereby punished. Yet this is not how a civil society typically functions. Life is full of potentially dangerous products, services, and ideas. It's up to individuals to take responsibility for their actions, because we all know that catering to the lowest common denominator does not give birth to a free society, let alone an intelligent one. Yet the RIAA will stop at nothing to make sure that you and I never have the chance to make such decisions for ourselves.

The absurdity of their arguments regarding the slippery slope of reform fails to recognize the most salient fact in all of this: anti-circumvention tools are easy to find, easy to use, and are being used every day. And this says nothing of the fact that in the instance of music, CDs are distributed without DRM anyway.

In other words, the cat is already out of the bag, and the people who are inclined to infringe on copyright are doing it right now. The only people left out in the cold are the honest users who are either afraid to circumvent access controls for fair use purposes, or lack the time and patience to go looking for tools. No one benefits from this situation except the RIAA and friends, and of course their interests ultimately have little to do with anything but trying to create new artificial business models.