Here is a very good example of why we need to allow consumers to exercise the benefits of technology by enjoying the software that they've paid for or that their family has sent over from India with regional coding, as well as by using their hardware.
In 1982—I'm answering your question, Mr. Angus, but it's also relevant to the previous question from Mr. Fast—Jack Valenti, who was the head of the Motion Picture Association of America, very famously told Congress that the VCR was to the American entertainment industry and the American economy as the Boston Strangler was to the woman alone. He wanted to have the VCR crippled at the time by removing the TV tuner part of it. He said, “Oh my God, people are going to tape things in the afternoon and watch them at night”, and Sony said yes, that was the idea.
We all know what happened: two years later, the Supreme Court said to Jack that it was good technology and it was going to go ahead; it was fair use. The rest is history. Congress and the Supreme Court saved the motion picture industry from its own foibles. Everybody was better off by allowing consumers to use this new technology.
What we're saying is that consumers should have the right to use the hardware and the software that they have legitimately acquired, so if they want to make a copy of an expensive Blu-ray to protect it from being scratched by the dog or broken by the kid, there's no problem with that. There should be no problem with that. If they want to make a copy to play in their car and they've already paid for it, there should be no problem with that.
Will the industry get it right by itself? Mr. Valenti showed that if they can possibly get it wrong, they will, to everybody's detriment—not just theirs, but society's.