This file format description has been censored because either your browser or this server is in a country subject to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The security of the free world, not to mention the next few billions for Michael D. Eisner and Bill Gates, depends on the integrity of all copyright protection schemes being unchallenged, no matter how difficult this makes things for the user. First sale is irrelevant. Fair use is irrelevant. In the digital world, one free and clear copy can be copied again without loss indefinitely, resulting in billions and billions of dollars of opportunity loss, even on items with a total sales of less than a million dollars. Obviously, if this were to be permitted or even forbidden with less than the strongest of measures, companies such as AOL Time-Warner and Sony/Universal Studios would be bankrupt in no time.
Currently, only the US officially recognizes the importance of these measures, but Europe is catching on quickly. Directive 2001/29/EC will bring the same sort of censorship to the EU, preventing the bankrupting of such firms as Bertelsmann. The rationale is beautiful -- "rightholders have complete control over the manufacture distribution etc. of devices designed to circumvent anti-copying devices. A more flexible solution in this regard would have carried a greater risk of abuse and piracy." As in the US, fair use and first sale rights are irrelevant; risk of piracy and abuse are all that matters. And more fortunately, Europe doesn't have that pesky First Amendment to potentially interfere with the proper order of things; Europeans have always known that their speech was subject to control by their betters.