"Times have changed. Today, businesses shrink away from offering general-purpose technology whose suite of uses includes ones that fall outside the confines of today's copyright -- like automatic commercial-skipping in PVRs. They run screaming from businesses that are clearly infringing by today's standards -- like DVD-ripping movie jukeboxes.

And why not? After all, the penalties for guessing wrong about what the courts will find non-infringing are substantial. Shoplifting a CD might get you a slap on the wrist, but uploading one track off that disc to the Net will earn you a $150,000 penalty under the USA's No Electronic Theft Act (NET Act). With stakes that high, who can blame a company for being a little gunshy?