Strangely enough, it seems to me that this deal between RCA and Clearplay offers an opportunity to those of us concerned about copyright balance.

Clearplay is building a buisness around making the fair use of DVD's you already purchased. Although I don't want to use their product, I hope they win in court, and it looks like RCA and WalMart are betting that they will. Think about it; this is a much more sympathetic (in the eyes of the court) class of defendant than Corley or Johansen. It may be difficult for a long time to persuade a court that Linux programmers have a valid reason to bypass the Content Scrambling System.

In the end, Clearplay's defense boils down to "how is this service different from fast forwarding through the parts you don't want to see?" Assuming that fast-forwarding (and using the restroom during commercials :) ) isn't the next use to be consided piracy, this should be a slam dunk. Once that's established, it will be easier to make the argument that region free players should be legal...or video mixes for non-commercial use...

You and I may not agree with this particular application, but to the degree that we want to be able to tinker with the property we own, we're on the same side.