[Kjesse]

Parts of this legislation represent needed steps in the right direction. The $5000 liability cap is a huge deal, as it prevents some of the gross injustices seen in the US, as in where some people have been liable for $100,000+ for possessing (or more accurately, sharing) $200 worth of pirated content.

My biggest concern is that the digital lock provisions are too tight. Even then, since damages are limited to actual damages, it pretty much means the law won't be enforced for individuals doing it in their home.

This is what the digital lock provision does: It makes it illegal to defeat the copyright owners' encryption. In other words, if you like to use a home server, and buy blu-ray discs, ripping the blu-rays to your server so that you can watch all your movies without walking to your blu ray player and putting the disc in, is now illegal, even if you own the disc and aren't merely "borrowing or renting" it.

As an owner of a home server, I'm now potentially offside as I have my entire collection ripped. That being said I did it before this law came into effect, so I'm probably OK unless I buy another blu ray and rip it, I which case I might be liable for only that transgression-- my prior activities were legal, at the relevant time.

So I'm going to stop buying blu-rays as a form of protest, unless I REALLY like the movie. In any event the landscape is clearly moving to a subscription model whether I like it or not, and even though it will actually save me money in the long term. I find that the streaming services do not have the same sound and video quality compared to when you have the content locally. The sound is downgraded, and you end up with compression artifacts in your video.

That being said, for a home user, there is really no chance you'll ever be sued or charged if you rip your own blu-rays to your own server-- within the confines of your own home, no one would really know. The problem is that it is illegal and there's really no good reason for that to be.

For those who use bit torrents to download movies and music, I expect a small group of people are about to be made an example of in the near future, but mostly for the chilling effect it will have.

And yes, your ISP knows who you are based on your IP. With this legislation the copyright owner has the ability to force your ISP to disclose the identity of which customer was using the particular IP address at the relevant time. That would cost them a lot of money in court costs, but I'm certain they're going to try, at least to make an example.