The linked article is good as far as it goes, but it fails to take the next logical step and call for the simple repeal of the anti-circumvention section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

I was living in Washington, D.C. and following the DMCA when it became law in 1998 -- I can assure you that nobody expected sec. 1201 to morph into the creature it has become today. It was sold to Congress as a non-controversial way to implement a pair of (yawn) WIPO Copyright Treaties. The DMCA was approved unanimously in the Senate and by a process reserved for non-controversial legislation in the House; there was not even a recorded vote.

This is federal law as buggy and outdated code, which is badly in need of refactoring. I wrote about a proposed law to defang the DMCA back in 2003, once some of the 1201 problems became clear: http://news.cnet.com/Congress-mulls-revisions-to-DMCA/2100-1... But because of the influence of the copyright lobby, no amendments have ever succeeded.

I wrote more about a better way to approach 1201 and, more broadly, federal DRM policy in this law review article here: http://mccullagh.org/misc/articles/michigan.state.drm.0605.p...

While letting people know about John Deere's comments to the Copyright Office is great, the only reason the Copyright Office has a role here is that 1201 authorizes them to set exemptions. But why should we have to beg the Feds for exemptions when the underlying logic of 1201 is suspect?

At the very least 1201 deserves to be debated in Congress with an understanding of what it actually does and how it affects modern technology. When it was introduced 18 years ago, nobody could have known, and that debate has never happened.