A good article in Forbes this week summarizes the current state of Hollywood's war against your privacy in the state and local jurisdictions.

For those who have not read previous articles on this subject, the industry associations are trying to tighten the DMCA provisions by removing the loophole procedure that currently exists in the law through enacting state laws to add those "violations" back in.

Further, they are trying to "crack down" on the anonymity of the internet, claiming that their right to figure out who is using their intellectual property through any means (including intrusive spying and monitoring) is greater than you right to surf the internet in privacy and with whatever small amount of anonymity you can cobble together through NAT and privacy services.

To be sure, the internet isn't as anonymous as people would like or believe today. Every time you access the internet, records may be made that you used a particular IP address, so an investigating agency with sufficient authority and time can ask an ISP who was using an IP address at a particular time on a particular day. This, they can then use to trace it back to the account owner, or house that is being used.

However, so far it is still not legal for anyone (private or government) to knowing monitor your communications without a specific legal authority to do that. It's not a guarantee that you aren't being watched accidentally, or that your neighbors aren't "listening in" on your WiFi network or the transmissions on your cable system, however it does reduce the ability to use evidence gained in these ways in a court.

Based on the direction that the folks in the record and music industries are going, they want to be able to watch everything you do and make sure that you aren't doing something that harms them (civilly, not criminally).

Add to this the cable and DSL companies who are backing them because they would rather be able to charge you individually for each of the 3 or 4 computers you may have in your house working on the internet via a WiFi or NAT gateway and you have a lot of money going in to the pockets of your state and local "public" officials.