DMCA

From dKosopedia

Category: Legislation

Taken from the Executive Summary of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's paper, Unintended Consequences (which is under a Creative Commons license):

Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”)

Since they were enacted in 1998, the “anti-circumvention” provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”), codified in section 1201 of the Copyright Act, have not been used as Congress envisioned. Congress meant to stop copyright pirates from defeating anti-piracy protections added to copyrighted works, and to ban “black box” devices intended for that purpose.

In practice, the anti-circumvention provisions have been used to stifle a wide array of legitimate activities, rather than to stop copyright piracy. As a result, the DMCA has developed into a serious threat to several important public policy priorities:

Section 1201 Chills Free Expression and Scientific Research.

Experience with section 1201 demonstrates that it is being used to stifle free speech and scientific research. The lawsuit against 2600 magazine, threats against Princeton Professor Edward Felten’s team of researchers, and prosecution of Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov have chilled the legitimate activities of journalists, publishers, scientists, students, program–mers, and members of the public.

Section 1201 Jeopardizes Fair Use.

By banning all acts of circumvention, and all technologies and tools that can be used for circumvention, section 1201 grants to copyright owners the power to unilaterally eliminate the public’s fair use rights. Already, the music industry has begun deploying “copy-protected CDs” that promise to curtail consumers’ ability to make legitimate, personal copies of music they have purchased.

Section 1201 Impedes Competition and Innovation.

Rather than focusing on pirates, many copyright owners have wielded the DMCA to hinder their legitimate competitors. For example, Sony has invoked section 1201 to protect its monopoly on Playstation video game consoles, as well as their “regionalization” system limiting users in one country from playing games legitimately purchased in another.

Section 1201 Becomes All-Purpose Ban on Access To Computer Networks.

Further, section 1201 has been misused as a new general-purpose prohibition on computer network access which, unlike the several federal “anti-hacking” statutes that already protect computer network owners from unauthorized intrusions, lacks any financial harm threshold. Disgruntled ex-employer Pearl Investment’s use of the DMCA against a contract programmer who connected to the company’s computer system through a password-protected Virtual Private Network illustrates the potential for unscrupulous persons to misuse the DMCA to achieve what would not be possible under existing computer access regulation regimes.

This document collects a number of reported cases where the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA have been invoked not against pirates, but against consumers, scientists, and legitimate comp–etitors. It will be updated from time to time as additional cases come to light. The latest version can always be obtained at www.eff.org.

External Links

• DMCA Public Law 105-304 signed into law Oct. 28, 1998
• EFF DMCA Archive