DVDs, and many other forms of digital content, use a technology called Digital Rights Management that allow producers to control when and where you watch their protected content.

If a president of over-protection is set, then what at first is just DVD movies and commercial music, could soon become any form of digital information. While it may not happen over night, locking down all content could result in a environment where commercialized content is placed ahead of innovation and open thought.

Commentator and engineer Bill Hammack said on a recent episode on NPR that, "The U.S. has a long history of fair use: You have the right to cut out and frame a New Yorker cartoon. Or photocopy a newspaper article. Fair use also catalyzes innovation and allows us to talk about ourselves, to create culture. Take an artist of the future. He or she might want to make a statement using a bit of video or sound in a creative work.

But as all media — even books — become digital, every embodiment of thought or imagination becomes subject to commercial control. I urge us all to bear in mind T.S. Eliot's famous saying. "Good poets borrow; great poets steal."

Sony BMG recently received a hand slap from California courts for its implementation of DRM rootkit software, but the practice of locking, or restricting, information through the use of DRM remains mostly uncontested.