The entertainment industry has a problem: Not only are people sampling, sharing and swapping movies and music online, many don't even think they're stealing.

The industry has tried to stop this in the courts without much lasting success, and its limited, clumsy Internet ventures haven't drawn many customers either.

So the entertainment industry has turned to Congress for help. ...

Your fair-use rights -- your ability to back up a record or put together your own music collection -- would be at the sufferance of copyright owners alone. ...

Hollings's bill raises many questions. For instance, when did it become government's job to promote broadband and digital television in the first place? How will making TVs and computers less capable foster that goal? What's to stop the other 5.9 billion people on earth from making their own, non-copy-crippled hardware and software?

And just why do we need this technological totalitarianism in the first place?

It's not as though manufacturers won't help the entertainment industry. ...

But no matter what wrappers and locks are put on content, that which can be seen or heard can be copied. And once it's been sent up on the Internet in an unprotected format, it's never coming down. ...

If you want to retain the freedom to use things that you own, you should reject this trend. What can you do? ...

Without [consumers'] dollars, the entertainment industry is doomed. Just ask Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America. "Without the consumer, we're dead," he said in a phone interview Wednesday. "We don't have a future."