Note that the FOS movement has no problem with the strong
protection of intellectual property, which is at the heart of
the DMCA. That's not the problem. The problem is the way the
DMCA upsets a long-standing (and constitutionally mandated)
balance between publishers and readers and gives nearly
everything to publishers.
Because internet content crosses national boundaries, one
nation will often want to enforce the copyright judgments of
its own courts, interpreting its own laws, in another
country. Worldwide developments in parallel to the DMCA, like
the still evolving Hague Convention on Jurisdiction and
Foreign Judgments, are giving effect to these desires. The
problem is that these efforts, like the DMCA, put intellectual
property rights above free speech rights. The same rules that
let a nation enforce a copyright judgment beyond its own
boundaries also let it enforce a censorship judgment beyond
its own boundaries. Until recently, the border-crossing
potential of the internet was a feature; now it's a bug.
Until recently, it subjected less-free nations to the free
speech of the most-free nations.
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