Gee what VCR PLAYERS you talking of? When VCR came out they were both recorders and players, the supreme court 5-4 ruled it was legal to sell vcrs due to the legal use of it.
There were no Players only for Vcrs's.
Cdroms? When cdroms came out there were Burners too, just that the burners were extremly expensive, tell me how a cdrom could be created without a burner LOL!
The wording I should have used were VHS players (and these came out before recorders were introduced into the market), I had one, it was built into a TV w/15" screen, and all it did was play vhs tapes it had no record features on it at all. Made by Phillips/Magnavox.
Also of course there were burners, but, you seem to forget cd-rom burners did not come in PC's for quite awhile after cd-roms started coming in them and the initial price for a cd-rom burner was around $3600, not likely "many" home owned pc's had one of those at the initial release of cd-roms.
This is where I start to partially blame the industry itself for the high level of piracy there is today (and most likely why this new bill is being presented). By decreasing the price of cd-rom burners to practically nothing and then reducing the cost to connect to the internet, there's more than just piracy, major crimes are going on within the internet now. It seems they over-shot their abilities to police the net before they opened it up to the masses of the world. I remember when an online connection cost you $3 an hour or more. You didn't have many "kiddies" running around the net when it was that expensive. Not to mention 1200 baud connections that it would take a lifetime to download any major programs of today.
I also think you are over interpreting the law and over-reacting (basically because of this statement: "While all panelists expressed interest in working with the committee to halt piracy, four of the five panelists rejected the bill in its current form.") , you appear to be a liberal and that would explain why you don't like the law. I highly doubt these professional lawmakers would impose any such law that would make it so simple to sue anyone over anything as simple as you seem to believe it to be. I'm sure it will be tossed around and reworked so as not to make it as simple as you think it will be and even so, it still doesn't mean it will pass.
As I said before though, I rather hope it passes when it is written in fair form, it won't bother me at all. Laws have been changing for years and years now, nothing new here except attempting to make laws that would thwart and punish violators of copyright laws etc. etc. and also to hold technology responsible for these violations as well. Perhaps it might just slow technology down somewhat and we won't have to upgrade our systems every 2 years just to keep up. I'm all for that also.
And to show the increase in piracy, there was a thread at the wargamer.com that someone posted that the download count for DOOM III was already at 200,000. That's getting pretty serious when you have 200,000 individuals downloading a copyrighted game for free, no pay, just play. So there definitely needs to be some new laws imposed and I'm all for that if it eventually helps reduce the cost of software and eventually allows for the return and refund of faulty software or just don't like it at all.
