Bloglines announced their new Feed Access Control extension for RSS and Atom last week. Over at Sam Ruby's blog, Mark Pilgrim pointed out a potentially thorny legal implication of the extension:

"I am not a lawyer," but it seems entirely plausible that this new element could be considered "a technological measure that effectively controls access" under the DMCA (specifically section 1201). If so, software (such as Planet) that redistributes feed content without respecting this new element could be illegal under U.S. law, and any developers — and potentially any users — of such software could be subject to felony charges.