A clause included in the proposed U.S. legislative bill Digital Content Protection Act of 2006 would replace consumer fair use of copyrighted music with a requirement that all future "proposed regulations" for digital audio "permit customary historic use of broadcast content by consumers to the extent such use is consistent with applicable law". The ambiguous wording of this provision may stunt innovation in the media tech sector, as the MP3 format popularized the past decade didn't have a precedent aside from analog backups.

New devices or technologies the MPAA or RIAA doesn't like could theoretically be blocked by a court injunction during development, rather than the conventional practice of allowing a product to enter the market as long as its intended operation doesn't intentionally defy copyright law. Fair use is decided afterwards, for example, RIAA/MPAA lawsuits against P2P client developers. Hearings will be held by the Senate Commerce Committee on January 24th.

Read the Digital Content Protection Act of 2006 (PDF File)
Petition Against The Digital Content Protection Act of 2006 (Electronic Frontier Foundation)