by Mark Malek

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was signed into law by President Clinton in 1998 and is an implementation of two World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaties.  To make it much simpler than it really is, the DMCA is directed to provide protection to copyright owners that find their copyrighted materials improperly posted on the Internet.  Again, that is a big oversimplification of the provisions of the DMCA, but it is enough of a background for this story.  The full text of the DMCA can be found here.

On its face, the statute provides an important enforcement mechanism for copyright owners who can’t necessarily afford to hire a legal team.  As it works now, copyright protection is created without any real effort on the part of the author, and as a result, it is incredibly easy for someone to have enforceable copyrights.  With the current state of technology, it is becoming equally easy to infringe on them, so lawmakers wanted to make them just as easy to enforce.  However, as with nearly every other well-intentioned legislative initiative, the DMCA’s power to do good has been twisted by the hands of the wicked into a weapon for evil.

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