Another disturbing issue is the 'laundering' of DMCA analogues into other countries through trade-deals and other extra-political processes, with the general ap

Another disturbing issue is the 'laundering' of DMCA analogues into other countries through trade-deals and other extra-political processes, with the general apathy and sweeping under the rug that precedes these changes. While not directly related to anti-circumvention, the only recent positive development in the user-rights of proprietary software I can recall is an EU case by a private software vendor against the Belgian government in that courts ruled that reverse-engineering and patching of 'issues' in legitimately obtained software was not a crime and therefore the plaintiff lacked a case, even when a license prohibition applied. Some persons were unconvinced of impact because defendant was Belgian government (they have taxpayers foot the legal bill) but the facts involved are not trivial because there have been cases with the reverse-engineering and patching of legitimately obtained video-games for purposes that are not piracy that did not end up with a positive outcome. I see the next decade going one of two ways. Big companies attempt to attach criminal liability to perceived violations of their licenses or the likes of anti-trust wake up and we see more reinforcement of user-rights similar to the EU case.