But if the technology that Hollywood favors is defeatable, why are people like Wallach and Cianessi so worried? Why are geeks fighting so passionately against the shift toward copy protection?

The technology is not what bothers them -- it's the criminalization of the act of copying, and even worse, of the act of discussing copying, that critics find most alarming. Is it really in the public interest to continually increase the level of corporate ownership of ideas and expression? Who should Congress serve?

The DMCA -- which has already been used to threaten Felten and to prevent Web magazines from linking to at least one program deemed illegal by Hollywood -- and the so-called Sonny Bono Act, which extended the length of copyright protection by 20 years, forcing some Internet publishers to take down content that was once available in the public domain, are the leading legal offenders.

Both laws, say legal scholars, show how willing Congress is to comply with entertainment industry demands.

"In the 1970s and the 1980s, there were a substantial number of members of Congress who responded with skepticism when the movie or record business insisted that the threat of widespread unlicensed copying required new laws, and copyright owners who sought the legislation needed to draft it narrowly and make a persuasive case it was actually necessary," Litman says. "That's why, despite [MPAA chairman] Jack Valenti's claim that VCRs spelled the end of the U.S. movie industry, Congress did not enact any of the videotape-recorder/copy-protection bills introduced in the 1980s.

"Twenty years later, thanks in large part to the massive increase in lobbying money spent by the entertainment industries, most members of Congress would agree that more copyright protection is always better than less," says Litman.

The SSSCA fits squarely within this trend. The bill has yet to be introduced, but the draft that leaked to the Net last year would make it illegal "to manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide or otherwise traffic in any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies."

Hollings, who has received $264,534 in campaign contributions from the TV, music and movie industries since 1997, has attempted to argue that standardized copy protection is the key to encouraging the continuing rollout of broadband Net connectivity. According to this theory, customers won't sign up for DSL or cable Internet access if they can't get top-notch entertainment via their computers. But Hollywood won't make that content available unless it is confident it won't be pirated.

"This is what he sees as one of the critical problems -- the piracy of digital content," says Andy Davis, a Hollings spokesman. "And this is the method he sees as a solution for that."

But by outlawing any device that doesn't comply, the SSSCA would potentially make, for example, software that moved your hard drive's contents to a remote computer illegal. It would also make possession of devices and software already on sale a punishable offense.

Furthermore, argues Litman, the theory that broadband adoption is dependent on copy protection just doesn't hold water. The entertainment and information industries made the same argument in the early '90s as part of their lobbying for the DMCA, she notes, pointing out that they were wrong then, and are wrong now.

"In 1993, the White House was interested in developing what it first called the Information Superhighway and then the National Information Infrastructure," says Litman. "Entertainment and information industries argued that unless they were given stronger copyright protection, they'd refuse to make their content available over the NII, and therefore nobody would want to use it, so nobody would build the network. The administration actually endorsed this position in 1994 and 1995 reports, and introduced legislation designed to respond to it. Meanwhile, of course, the Internet was growing by leaps and bounds. Despite the absence of Hollywood movies, Random House books and BMG records, the Internet enjoyed the steepest adoption trajectory of any comparable technological innovation, becoming common in the majority of U.S. households within a decade."

Contrary to Hollywood's claims, the battle is not over broadband -- it's over business models. Though VCRs, DVDs and other new technologies have all added to Hollywood's bottom line, Hollywood is convinced that the world of digital downloads and streams will cost more than it brings in to corporate coffers. And so it has turned once again to Congress.

The legislature's willingness to listen cuts across political lines. The debate doesn't fit neatly into a liberal/conservative framework, says Lessig. It's "controlled vs. free," he writes in "The Future of Ideas," or "old vs. new."

Even Shamoon admits that we're in the midst of an "ugly transition period." Everyone is dreaming of a time "when content exists in the air and follows you around," he says. "I want to be able to walk into a hotel room and have it realize it's me and let me watch my movies from home."

But that ideal seems a long way off, and in the meantime, despite Congress' eagerness to do Hollywood's bidding, there's no clear sign yet as to who is going to win the intellectual-property wars.

Brian Cianessi figures that his CD will end up looking like some sort of omen -- perhaps the thin end of the wedge that marks the end of the golden age of Net file-trading. But he's not sure what will emerge.

"We currently exist during a turning point that will be considered historically significant to coming generations," he says. "I can only hope that when they look back to this time they can see the stand we took on copyright as the fulcrum for the shift of power back to the people and away from big corporations."

This story has been corrected.

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