Referred to as 'Sopa' and 'Pipa', the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect Intellectual Property Act could see content owners given powers to request sites associated with piracy be closed down and removed from search engine results.

The legislation would allow the Justice Department and content owners to seek court orders requiring search engines to block results associated with piracy.

As Israel points out, though, it is not a signatory to the two WIPO treaties that mention DRM, and it notes that even content owners have different approaches to the issue.

Major League Baseball said yesterday that it would begin charging fans to listen to audio broadcasts of its games over the Internet, a stark illustration of how content owners are trying to find business models that work in the online medium.

Although France's "graduated response" proceedings have attracted the most attention, the UK is in the midst of a consultation of its own on how to involve both content owners and ISPs in some sort of response to P2P file-sharing.

Apple knocked these down one at a time with iTunes, starting out as a Mac-only product, adding a hardware component to ensure a smooth end-to-end experience, and getting content owners on board with a combination of guile ("Hey, it's only available to Mac users, a tiny percentage of the market.

Is it content owners and consumers, or RealNetworks?

If a particular implementation proves to be insufficient, as highlighted by a hack or a valid complaint from content owners..." So now content owners are able to complain.