Just in case folks haven’t figured out how sweeping the Hollings-Feinstein bill, aka CBDTPA is, well, keep reading.
The CBDTPA says that if I were to write and sell this BASIC program…
10 INPUT A$ 20 PRINT A$…after the regulations take effect, I would be guilty of a federal felony. That’s up to five years in prison and up to a $500,000 fine. Distributing my two-line application without charging for it, either via handing out floppies or by posting it on a website would be at least a civil offense and, depending on the circumstances, a crime as well.
It’s no joke. CBDTPA regulates ‘any hardware or software that reproduces copyrighted works in digital form.’ My program above does that, especially if my BASIC interpreter permits arbitrarily long strings.
— Declan McCullagh, in ‘CBDTPA bans everything from two-line BASIC programs to PCs’
The rest of the article is well worth reading, also. This bill is just plain scary.