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In 100 years from now, you will have software that is nominally in the public domain, but cannot legally be used, because all practically available copies will

In 100 years from now, you will have software that is nominally in the public domain, but cannot legally be used, because all practically available copies will have DRM on it. The prohibitions of the DMCA's anticircumvention provisions do not merely prohibit you from breaking DRM on a copyrighted work. If that was the case, then this wouldn't be a problem: once the work falls into the public domain the DRM wrapping would have no legal force. However, the DMCA also prohibits making or distributing tools capable of breaking DRM. That means that as long as there's even a single copyrighted work protected by some DRM scheme, then you can't break DRM on otherwise uncopyrighted works. This is sort of like living in a world where burgling old homes is perfectly legal, but lockpicks are also illegal, and so people who always locked their homes have basically opted out of the intent of the law.

Silhouette 6y ago
I doubt anyone really believes that today's DRM will be any impediment to copying software 100 years from now. The problem is that DRM by its nature doesn't distinguish between uses that should be prevented by law anyway and legal uses that are only disrupted by the technology. If those anti-circumvention provisions you mentioned were abolished, that would be much less of a problem in practice. That still leaves all the other questions about the duration of copyright protections, what fair use or the equivalent concepts should mean in an era of technological protections, and whether it's healthy for society to encourage perpetual rental models for creative work rather than permanent rights to access any given material, but these are separate (and potentially complicated) debates to be had.