The oppostion to DRM continues to grow in membership. Timothy B. Lee, who has written a policy analysis for the Cato Institute titled "Circumventing Competition: The Perverse Consequences of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act," has an op-ed in yesterday's Salt Lake Tribune that's basically a teaser version of the 28-page analysis. Here's a taste:

"The DMCA was billed as an anti-piracy measure. It prohibits anyone from 'circumventing' a copy protection scheme such as that used to scramble songs from the iTunes store, or from creating software to do so. ... But that's not how things have worked out in the real world. After nearly a decade on the books, it's hard to find any evidence that the DMCA has reduced piracy.

Congress may have intended to target copyright infringers, but in practice the DMCA mostly harms paying customers by preventing them from playing legally acquired content on the device of their choice. The Constitution says that the purpose of intellectual property is to 'promote the progress of science and the useful arts.' When a copyright law begins to interfere with peoples' freedom to enjoy the content they have legally purchased, Congress needs to give it another look."