Law: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act

The DMCA is an anti-piracy regulation adopted in 1998, which makes it illegal to circumvent copy protections to prevent pirates from replicating computerized products and selling or openly distributing them. It also makes it impossible to create and sell tools or strategies by evading copy restrictions. However, the highly contested law’s implications cover a broad scope, giving room for film, music, game developers, conglomerates, and many others to maintain strict control over how users utilize their copyrighted content. This prohibits people from copying files of others merchandise for their use or baseband firmware devices, such as smartphones, from integrating them in various ways that the producers loathe.

The DMCA features two contentious segments: segment 1201, which addresses redundant subversion, and segment 512. The latter allows a copyright holder to issue a “removal notification” to websites and others accused of breaching infringement (Hathaway, 2020). These have been abused by businesses for various reasons related to copyright protection, causing advocacy organizations and many others to call for legal changes to clarify its scope. Companies, for instance, have made use of it to impede rivals while also stifling freedom of speech and safety research. This is a prevalent misconception since the DMCA is or was a statute that only can be enforced in the United States.

In the event where the server is U.S base, it is liable to DMCA restrictions irrespective of whether the owner of the site or copyright holder is a resident or not. Although the DMCA does not extend outside the United States, some copyright holders issue DMCA takedown requests to non-US websites (Gusenbauer & Haddaway, 2020). In this regard, many websites have met all the requirements in compliance with national and international copyright regulations. Websites in nations that have joined the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaty are more likely to comply with DMCA takedown requests.

The DMCA fair use principle allows specific protected works to be included in certain circumstances. For example, if you are expanding on the original work or producing something new from it, it is acceptable to utilize it for “transformative” purposes (Hathaway, 2020, 328). You may also be permitted to use copyrighted materials for non-commercial purposes especially if the usage does not diminish the quality of the underlying content. However, one is deemed to break the law if the copyrighted content is utilized without the author’s consent (and in a way that is not permitted by fair use). Most of the infringement practices involve the use copyrighted pictures in a blog post, copying direct content from various sites, or posting unlawful music or films to a site for people to watch or download.

One is said to have violated basic copyright rules if:

• Someone sends you copyrighted content via e-mail, and this gets distributed to several unauthorized individuals.
• You create a digital audio duplicate of a track from either a CD (purchasers are expressly authorized to do so) and then distributed the MP3 file(s) over the Web through a sharing site.
• You make payment to access a file-sharing network that is not permitted to distribute or create copies of the copyrighted content with the intention of gaining access to devices of other network users.
• You use an instant messaging service to share copyrighted content.
• You have a pc with a disc burner, helpful in burning digital copies you have downloaded onto readable CDs.

DMCA Critics

Whereas record labels and software behemoths equally embraced the DMCA, it is not without its detractors. Many people are opposed to the act, but they lack the political clout to take on the giant corporations. Scientists, researchers, and the open-source development community were among the most vocal opponents, who regarded the law as an attempt to suppress the free movement of knowledge. For this reason, the law has been abused since its inception.

The most prevalent argument is that the DMCA empowers overzealous copyright holders to seek the removal of content from websites that may not infringe its intellectual property laws. Refusing to delete the content makes websites to be legally guilty of owners’ requests (Hathaway, 322). Too frequently, credible websites are taken down since the owner of a previous comparable website tends to hold that new websites trespasses on their copyrights (which is not permitted under the DMCA). The new owner hands over the domain name and the site to the complaint to avoid worse legal measures.

The DMCA has also been chastised for having a chilling impact on research, notably in cryptography. It is all too simple for such a blameless cryptanalyst to be wrongly convicted of DMCA violations and subjected to harsh legal penalties (Gusenbauer & Haddaway, 2020). Dmitry Skylarov, a Russian programmer, was detained following a presentation at the once-popular DEFCON event and kept in jail for over a month before being released without official indictments (Gusenbauer & Haddaway, 2020). Several scholars have also been accused of violating the DMCA. This argument contends that the DMCA criminalizes freedom of opinion, hence causing harm to many unwitting victims.

Other criticisms of the act claim that the practice jeopardizes the “fair use” of intellectual property which customers have paid for. A perfect example is evidenced in the measures which most of the firms such as Apple have taken to safeguard their products, which limits customers’ access to the already acquired content. In addition, software engineers must go through excruciatingly long processes to get respective applications to iPhone and other popular phone users (Gusenbauer & Haddaway, 2020). Many people believe that the limits imposed on these gadgets are too stringent, despite their high price level which some of the customers are unlikely to afford.

DMCA Notable Court Cases

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) launched a lawsuit against Real Networks for its existing DVD software in August 2009. Users can use this program to copy DVDs to computer hard drives for usage without the original disc. While many users welcomed this convenience, the practice was against the MPAA standards (Gusenbauer & Haddaway, 2020). They initiated a lawsuit, which they won, alleging that their anti-piracy systems, including such ARccOS protection and Rip Guard, were evaded. They also alleged a contract violation with the MPAA’s material encrypting mechanism.

In addition, Viacom filed a DMCA complaint about YouTube and its mother firm, Google. Viacom accused the site of “gross purposeful copyright infringement” for hosting 160,000 unlicensed clips of Viacom programs (Reid, 2019). Google’s defense is that under the rules of the DMCA, corporations cannot be held liable for anything submitted by their users. On March 11, 2008, a judge ruled that Viacom had no recourse to unjust enrichment over YouTube or even its mother firm. Contractual remedies, on the other hand, remain an option to be considered.

IO Group Inc. sued Veoh Networks, alleging that the media company allowed IO Group’s copyrighted material (videos) to be seen on approximately 40,000 occasions from June 1 to June 22, 2012. Similarly, Veoh sought restitution for its users that led to DMCA violations (Reid, 2019). On the other hand, IO claimed that Veoh’s conversion of uploaded movies to FLV versions for online viewing gave them custody of the assets. This would make them ineligible for DMCA safe protection from infringements (Reid, 2019). The court judge concluded that the accused was not liable since they had just established an automated mechanism that some individuals were abusing. Because posted videos are not vetted, Veoh had no direct control over them. As a result, companies were awarded safeguards underneath the DMCA. Timothy Vernor vs. Autodesk is another perfect case example that occurred in August 2007. He was suing for restitution for Autodesk’s claimed DMCA violations in the form of takedown warnings for his eBay listings (Reid, 2019). He had every authority to sell rummaged-through software. The Autodesk’s accusation that he violated the software’s licensing agreement was rejected.

In regard to the above case scenarios, analyzed below are some of the outcomes:

Penalties in Civil Court

The DMCA empowers registered copyright holders to file their cases federal district court. To stop potential encroachments, the federal court has the authority to issue injunctions against the defendant. The complainant may also collect any profits gained by the defendants due to the violation, which are likely to be in tens of thousands of dollars.

Goods Destruction

The federal court has the authority to seize assets that it believes have been used to infringe the DMCA. Suppose the defendant is proven to have already infringed the DMCA requirements, the court has the authority to compel the demolition of the defendant’s property and the destruction of commodities generated by those tools. The law allows confiscation or destruction of DVD burners, servers, program disks, and any other equipment used by the defendant to bypass copyright protections or breach the plaintiff’s copyrights.

Takedown Notices

Copyright holders have the power to file a “takedown” request to an internet service provider, demanding any copyrighted work be deleted from a webpage. However, there is no time limit for compliance, but the concerned firm should delete or prohibit access to the information detailed in the notification (Ginsburg & Strowel, 2020). Under some conditions, the person who posted the item may react with the rebuttal notification to reinstate the content and avoid responsibility. Fines and other possible legal measures will be enforced on anybody who leads to content withdrawal or counters notifications while lacking evidence or files fraudulent notices. Because DMCA notifications are submitted under penalties of perjury, here is the risk of criminal consequences.

In this case, the defendants might have reasons why they went against the DMCA, which could be considered during the court ruling. Although the reason may be valid, it is against the law of copyright, hindering them from continuing with the infringements (Ginsburg & Strowel, 2020). Also, the court should follow the act laws to safeguard the content of the original owners. The practice will help solve the violations and make all parties interested with content to follow the proper procedures. The laws are set to help safeguard the initial owner of the content. Although some are likely to interpret this as undue limitation to product access, it tends to have more advantages than disadvantages, making it viable in the internet field.

References

Ginsburg, J., & Strowel, A. (2020). Copyright liability for hyperlinking. In Research Handbook on Intellectual Property and Digital Technologies. Edward Elgar Publishing. Web.

Gusenbauer, M., & Haddaway, N. R. (2020). Which academic search systems are suitable for systematic reviews or meta‐analyses? Evaluating retrieval qualities of Google Scholar, PubMed, and 26 other resources. Research synthesis methods, 11(2), 181-217. Web.

Hathaway, T. (2020). Neoliberalism as corporate power. Competition & Change, 24(3-4), 315-337. Web.

Reid, A. (2019). Considering Fair Use: DMCA’s Takedown & Repeat Infringers Policies. Communication Law and Policy, 24(1), 101-141. Web.