Ironically the people who ARE mass pirating music will be largely unaffected by this. Defeating the copy protection methods is very simple - lots of free software already exists that will do just that, and I'm sure every free ripper will be protected TOC agnostic when protected CD's become commonplace. Kiddies downloading thousands of tracks from Kazaa won't be affected in the slightest.

The people who WILL be affected are those that adopt relatively expensive products to enhance their listening experience. These are the types of people who are the most likely to buy their music before transfering it to their preferred environment. The record labels, armed with DMCA, will be able to go straight for the companies and individual employees who implement "a means to work around a copy protection method", i.e. by allowing the user to continue to enjoy their music in the way they prefer.

The ability to go after an individual (e.g. Skylarov) is the worst part. If I asked a developer to write a ripper for CD's with broken session TOC's (i.e. "copy protected") then that developer would face arrest and prosecution under the DMCA if they were to enter the USA.

I sincerely hope that this situation gets resolved in a sensible way, but you have to wonder whether the record companies are too powerful, paranoid, greedy, ill informed and perhaps plain evil for that to happen.

The above represents my personal opinion, of course.

Rob