Top 10 assaults on digital liberties

After interviewing experts in the intellectual property wars over the past three years, I've come up with this list of Top 10 infringements on U.S. citizens' digital liberties. (Those living abroad are seeing their digital freedoms eroded as well, thanks to WIPO agreements signed under U.S. pressure.) Feel free to make your own list, or comment below.

1. INDUCE Act

The proposed legislation in Congress, with bipartisan backing, was beaten back at the 11th hour, but some form of this legislation will undoubtedly be back. The INDUCE Act would effectively outlaw innovative new technologies, such as peer-to-peer networks and devices that could be construed as "inducing" a copyright violation. Think: iPod.

2. Broadcast flag

The Federal Communications Commission bowed to the entertainment industry's demands to make digital televisions less capable for viewers, but a federal court struck down the ruling in May 2005. Think the fight is over? It now moves to Congress.

3. DMCA

The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act prohibits citizens from circumventing locks on digital media even for legitimate purposes. The anti-circumvention provisions need to be repealed.

4. Copyright Extension Act

The 1998 Sonny Bono Act extended copyright terms -- already unreasonably long -- by another 20 years, preventing vast numbers of digital materials from the 1920s from entering the public domain and frustrating Internet publishers, scholars and users.

5. Fair use — going, going, gone?

The entertainment industries have launched a systematic attack on fair use, restricting the ways in which the public can access and use media — especially visual media — so that citizens can no longer make legal uses of materials that were readily accessible in the analog era.

6. Trusted computing

The jury is still out on this one, but if inter-industry efforts succeed in reengineering the personal computer according to Hollywood's wishes, computers will no longer be general computing devices but entertainment playback machines.

7. Hollywood's strategy of chilling innovation

The entertainment industry has effectively thwarted innovative startups from bringing disruptive new products and technologies to market because of fears of a major lawsuit.

8. Overly restrictive DRM

Onerous, anti-consumer uses of digital rights management have chipped away at the traditional ways in which the public can access and use media, paving the way for a pay-per-view universe.

9. Proposed audio broadcast flag

If the FCC is granted authority by Congress, it may adopt the RIAA's request to lock down copyrighted audio content, making it difficult to time-shift and transfer copyrighted audio shows between different devices.

10. Consortium collusion

Corporations that work on networking and the interoperability of devices frequently set standards that prevent citizens from doing what they want with content they legally own.

Honorable mention: The No Electronic Theft Act of 1997.