For example, paragraph (b)(ii) of the new bill permits "an act of circumvention that is carried out solely for the purpose of enabling a person to skip past or to avoid commercial or personally objectionable content in an audiovisual work." Sounds reasonable, but may prove too vague to legally enforce. What if I find Reservoir Dogs in its entirety to be "personally objectionable?" Do I now have the right to circumvent CSS encryption on every frame on the DVD? Paragraph (b)(v), allowing "an act of circumvention that is carried out to gain access to a work of substantial public interest solely for purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, scholarship, or research", is similarly abuse-worthy.

A more practical objection lies in paragraph (b)(v), permitting "an act of circumvention that is carried out solely for the purpose of enabling a person to transmit a work over a home or personal network, except that this exemption does not apply to the circumvention of a technological measure to the extent that it prevents uploading of the work to the Internet for mass, indiscriminate redistribution". Home copying was unlikely to cause problems for rights holders in the VCR age; but considering that many consumers leave their home wireless networks unprotected, an innocent home copier could now unwittingly distribute his copy without ever uploading it.

Even though this particular bill may be flawed, it's encouraging that somebody is thinking about the problem.