Digital Millennium Copyright Act

DMCA Overview

The DMCA makes it a crime to circumvent anti-piracy tools in commercial software, or to sell code-cracking devices or programs. It does, however, allow some copyright-protection protocols to be cracked in the name of encryption research, or of assessing product interoperability, or of testing computer security systems. It has other provisions that, like the existing copyright laws, prevent unauthorized copying of a copyrighted digital work. Making or selling devices or services that are capable of either copying or circumventing the protections of copyrighted works is also a crime under the law, in certain circumstances. The law provides some exemptions for non-profit libraries, archival database keepers, and educational institutions.

The DMCA limits the culpability of Internet service providers (ISPs), so they can't be punished if someone uses their routers and servers to illegally transmit copyrighted content over the Internet; however, ISPs are supposed to remove such infringed material when they find it. Universities and colleges are also protected under the DMCA; they can't be punished if students or staff using the schools' Internet channels put up Web sites that infringe copyrights.

Other parts of the law require that Webcasters pay licensing fees to record labels when playing their recordings online, while mandating that the U.S. Copyright Office submit recommendations to the U.S. Congress on “maintaining an appropriate balance between the rights of copyright owners and the needs of users.”

Violators of the DMCA may be punished by fines of up to $500,000 and five years in prison for a first offense, and by fines of up to $1 million and 10 years in prison for any subsequent offenses.

Fair Use

Whatever its intentions, the DMCA has sparked great public controversy among civil liberties groups, free-speech advocates, digital-device manufacturers, and content users, who complain that the law does not merely extend copyrights to digital media, it supercedes old copyright protections, and in some cases cancels out the public's traditionally guaranteed limited rights to fair use of copyrighted material. Fair use is a legal doctrine that allows individuals to duplicate copyrighted material without compensating the copyright holder if the copied material is used for education, research, criticism, or certain other purposes. The fair-use doctrine suggests that such commonplace behaviors as making copies of software programs to use on a second household computer, or “ripping” tracks from CDs to make “mix” compilations for personal listening, would be protected. But the legality of such behavior is in fact in dispute under the DMCA.

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