Agreed!
...
Anyone have suggestions on what idealistic things to ask for?
* Copyright reform would be great, but seems like a lot of it is international treaty.
* Real net neutrality
* More and better broadband.
* Support for net security (DNSSEC) and anonymity (e.g. Tor), maybe IPv6.
* In defense of the first-sale doctrine and promote compatibility - eliminate the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA
* Truth in labeling - all systems using DRM have to be fully described on the outside of the box and all advertising materials
Ideally we'd want regulations on the other guy more than on the yourself. But just because Hollywood doesn't want it doesn't mean it we would. For example Hollywood would fight tooth and nail against something like "Free trade for DVDs - End region locking" but it would probably only help them in the long run.
That said:
* Legal recognition of public domain donations.
* Legal recognition of public domain recursive work (in the vein of the GPL, where work from it must also be in the public domain.)
-> treaties where the USA is the driving force behind making them ever more onerous. The rest of the world would love it if the wish list came to pass, and it would make a whole lot of other things (e.g. Free trade agreements) a lot more palatable.
The GPL does have some extra requirements, in the form of source code sharing requirements for derivative works, but judging by how many people use more permissive open-source licenses, the difference here seems to be pretty slight in practice.
Anyway it's a pony suggestion, not a serious proposal for a law. What I'd actually like to see is reduction of copyright/patent terms, abolition of certain patent types, expansion of fair use boundaries, and explicit rules for determining fair use without going to court.
But these are all suggestions that should be coming from Congress and from lobbyists while they're negotiating the terms of the deal, so they feel like they've accomplished some level of "damage control." Meanwhile they've wasted a lot of energy inching away from the ideal/extremist proposal and towards the compromise we actually want.