I think Mike is trying to describe the worst case scenario to arouse opposition. Bear in mind that the Content Faction (and maybe the Tech Faction) want to control the world, not just the US. All countries are targets for SSSCA and DMCA through copyright treaties and other control regimes. Just a few days ago the last country needed to enforce the WIPO Copyright Treaty signed on. WIPO is the global version of DMCA. And the Hague Convention is meeting shortly to set up the legal framework to enforce the various global treaties on protecting intellectual property. Sure, there will continue to be gray and black markets in software but criminalization of circumvention devices will put some youngsters (and oldsters) in jail, as we see looming from the recent warez raids. I'm optimistic that Mike is too pessimistic but he knows how to arouse by avoiding rosy ending scripts. The MPAA and co-conspirators are dirty fighters and nobody should expect to merely ignore them, thinking that loosening of crypto controls is a model. They know that precedent and are determined to do what governments could not. Question is, as ever, what about the programmers within the factions who are needed to carry out the wishes of the bosses. In this, crypto could be a bellweather, for showing how the technicians learned to outwit the others. But are technical folks more susceptible these days to bribery of swell life styles than the crypto-rebels were? Or better, are there well-endowed, smarter than most, Factioners who do not want to be part of hegemonic putridity? We'll see what the Factions offer the liberators to keep them hard at work, happy to be protected intellectual property slaves. None of whom would waste a second here except to pick up intelligence for blowing upholes.