CMI and state anti-piracy statutes

Thought of the day: There's an interesting paper to be written about state requirements to put the publisher/manufacturer on every CD & DVD, and the DMCA's CMI provisions, in contrast with the early history of English licensing, including requirements that publishers be identified.  The aim of that rule was to make it easier to identify and control seditious libel, but making identification a separate requirement simplified enforcement: someone who doesn't put a name on a book was violating the rule regardless of content.  The DMCA requires facilitation of infringement, but state regimes generally don't; still, it's hard to explain what those state laws are doing that isn't preempted, which is not to say that courts haven't tried.

Brought to you by Licentious Gotham, which also discusses publisher-disclosure requirements as ways to control the production of obscenity (compare also the current federal record-keeping requirements for producers of pornography).