Important: This article contains opinions and information about copyright law. Keep in mind that I am not a lawyer and have not been a lawyer in any past life that I am aware of. If you have specific questions about copyright law you should contact the appropriate legal resources.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act was signed into law in 1998 by President Clinton. It's goal was to update the United States copyright law for the digital age. This was to attempt to prepare for the ratification of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaties.
It must be made clear that this is the most comprehensive reform of United States copyright law in a generation. The changes signed into law are tremendously sweeping and will have a effect on everyone who writes or creates, especially in an electronic form.
The law is the result of several years of negotiations and meetings between many different countries, and represents a real attempt to deal with the realities of media in the electronic age. The ramifications of the act are international in scope as many of the new provisions were required by various treaty organizations.
Perhaps the most contentious part of the act is the provisions concerning the circumvention of copy protection systems. This law provides for severe penalties for breaking any copy protection scheme, and is even harsher on the distribution of any means of bypassing copy protection software.
Interestingly, there are some exceptions to this restriction on the circumvention of copy protection.
Anyone (or any company) who has had his rights violated under these provisions of the act may file a civil case in federal court. In other words, if your company creates an ebook and uses some method of copy protection, and you find someone is distributing a way to break that copy protection, then you may sue that person or company.
In fact, if you distribute a hack to a copy protection scheme for monetary gain, then you are subject to criminal prosecution. Section 1204 penalties range up to a $500,000 fine or up to five years imprisonment for a first offense, and up to a $1,000,000 fine or up to 10 years imprisonment for subsequent offenses.
Fair Use is the concept that limited copying is allowed under the law. This allows, for example, a movie reviewer to include a brief quote or a research paper to include passages from referenced text. The idea is the copying must be "fair" and not excessive. DMCA continues to allow fair use in that you can still include passages from copy written (or even copy protected) works in your own. In other words, you may still use fair use even on works that are protected by copy protection, as long as you don't circumvent the copy protection.
With all of the rhetoric about this act, one fact that I have not heard widely discussed is that within 18 months of the passage of the act all video cassette records must include Macrovision. This is a technical way to attempt to prevent copying of movies. The provision explicitly states that this protection must NOT be transmitted over television as the Supreme Court has declared that it is legal to copy movies transmitted to television.
The law also modifies the copyright act to allow transient copying explicitly legal. This includes storing a web page in a cache or while it is being transmitted. Previous to the passage of the act, such things were technical violations of the copyright laws. These provisions are intended to protect ISP's from breaking copyright laws through the normal course of business.
In addition, the law also states that ISP's are not required or requested to monitor anyone in order to enforce copyright law. This means ISP's are not required or even requested to enforce this law. However, the ISP is expected to take swift action if it discovers that it's customers are violating copyright law.
These are only the highlights of this law, and there were many other changes. You would do well to read the law in it's entirety in order to understand how copyrights work in this new century.
Unless otherwise noted, all photos and text is Copyright © Richard G Lowe, Jr.