Edited by author 03-12-2003 07:02 PM
My $.02:

Right now, I think they're at the "duplicate it without understanding it" phase. They don't know, can't know, WHAT memories are being formed.

This synchs in a bit with the wired-cat-eye bombshell from a few years back. By festooning a cat's thalamus with sensors, they could decode what a cat saw. (In the form of a low-res image.) But it was just a raw, unprocessed image. Further up the neurological chain of perception, they'd probably get meaningless data-jumbles. Gists, rather than bitmapped graphics. So, no dream-reading or thought reading would be possible.

So, it'll probably be a generation or two before newborns have their hippocampi replaced with DMCA-compliant substitutes that keep them from remembering copyrighted works without the proper purchase key.