... appeared¹

For didactic purposes I say the issues arose as soon as the photocopier was developed, but actual legal challenges only started in the 1990's. See Ronald B. Standler's ``Some Observations on Copyright Law'', as modified on Sep. 16, 2001 at http://www.rbs2.com/copyr.htm#anchor444444 . However, other then possible changes in the general legal climate, there is no compelling reason these suits could not have been filed decades earlier and won then.

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... DMCA²

``Digital Millenium Copyright Act'', text available at http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/hr2281_dmca_law_19981020_pl105-304.html.

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... refills³

http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000305.html

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... openers⁴

http://research.yale.edu/lawmeme/modules.php?name=News&;file=article&sid=1187

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... Gutenburg⁵

http://promo.net/pg/

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...dst/DeCSS/Gallery/index.html)⁶

Touretzky, D. S. (2000) Gallery of CSS Descramblers, accessed October 9, 2000.

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... Management⁷

Yes, technically DRM is supposed to stand for ``Digital Rights Management'', but I believe that to be a misnomer, since all the rights are expressed in terms of restrictions on the receiver. So why not call it what it is? I see it more as a refusal to accept propoganda at face value then a snarky comment, because it's a more accurate description, not at attempt to shade the truth.

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... language⁸

http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/objects.html#h-13.2, especially this part:

The alt attribute specifies alternate text that is rendered when the image cannot be displayed (see below for information on how to specify alternate text ). User agents must render alternate text when they cannot support images, they cannot support a certain image type or when they are configured not to display images.

Emphasis mine. As long as you render ALT text, there is no requirement to actually show the image.

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... knowledge⁹

In the proposed implementation from Microsoft, the user could shut off the Smart Tags if they like, but they were on by default. A certain large percentage of users would never know they could be turned off, or even what they were, so for many people the effect would be that they were on without even their knowledge.

Of course in the EULA I'm sure we'd all be agreeing to this... everybody who reads the EULAs for Windows/IE completely please raise their hands. Uh-huh, thought so. Receiver consent is irrelevant, of course, but it's even more egregious when they don't consent.

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... footnote¹⁰

1. I can't think of any particular restrictions in contract law that would be unethical to apply to communication, as long as symmetry is preserved and subject to the exception in my next answer. The fundamental problem with EULAs, in my final analysis, lies not with their existence, but with their rampant abuse of the asymmetry between the sender and receiver, exacerbated by things like UCITA. I mean, come on, agreeing to a contract that is physically impossible to see until you've opened the package and thereby ``agreed'' to it? But fundamentally, there is nothing wrong with giving someone software to use on the basis that they enter into a contract with the sender.
2. I see no reason to restrict the receiver's use of the message if they do not forward it to someone else. Fundamentally, I can ``replay'' a movie in my memory, and you can't erase your content from my brain. Based on this, there is no good reason to restrict the receiver once the message is received, because in a very real sense, the message has become part of the receiver's life and they have the right to re-experience it at will. This is the one contract clause I think is unethical without extreme extenuating circumstances (such as classified information).
3. As a result of my answer to 2, no interaction is possible. Once the sender sends their message, they are blind to what the receiver does with it. It might seem the model I've built is a little biased in favor of this point of view, but I submit that's because reality is biased in favor of this view; we must artificially limit the receiver to create a viable ``pay-per-every-view'' market.
4. I'd keep Fair Use as it is now, require that Fair Use be possible and made reasonably easy as the Free Speech considerations override any putative sender's right to prevent Fair Use, and otherwise allow the sender to restrict the receiver in a mutually-agreeable manner subject to normal law.

In light of the analysis I'm about to perform in the main text, and due to the careful definitions I've given many of these terms, there is actually a lot more to these answers then immediately meets the eye. Remember that unlike the rest of the essay which I claim is Truth, I am explicitly labelling this my Opinion.

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...¹¹

Beaming service: Because the process of ripping MP3s from a CD was somewhat challenging, MP3.com wanted to provide a service where you prove to them that you have a CD, and they will send you pre-ripped MP3's from their server. They were shut down and issued a ruinous fine when courts found this to be copyright-infringing distribution.

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