Digital Millennium Copyright Act

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Extract from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act ( DMCA ) is a law of the United States of America , which serves to implement the WIPO Copyright Treaty of 1996 into national law, but which goes beyond the protection standards prescribed therein for all contracting states.

It creates a legal basis for the legal prosecution of copyright infringements on the Internet. The recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the film producers' association , were intensively promoting the resolution of this law, and their rights as copyright holders were thereby expanded. The DMCA tries to regulate the new conditions that result from the possibility of creating exact copies through digital reproduction . It criminalizes the production and distribution of technologies, devices or services that circumvent access restrictions (such as digital rights management , DRM) to copy-protected works (ie “crack the copy protection”), even if the copyright itself is not violated. It also increases the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet.

On October 28, 1998, President Bill Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, passed on October 8 by the United States Senate . The law provides a basis for sometimes heated discussions , as it creates the possibility, among other things, of claiming private data without a court judgment or lawsuit.

On May 22, 2001, the European Union passed a similar directive with Directive 2001/29 / EC .

use cases

The DMCA has become the subject of several disputes. Many companies use the DMCA as an extended patent without the possibility of licenses and without time restrictions.

Legal proceedings

  • Lexmark filed a lawsuit against Static Control Components (SCC) in December 2002 for making cartridges that worked in Lexmark printers. To do this, SCC had to install a chip in the cartridge that behaved in the same way as with the original cartridges. Lexmark was lost on appeal in 2004.
  • Epson has also been producing cartridges with chips for a long time. Other suppliers therefore do not deliver cartridges for newer Epson printers.
  • The DVD Copy Control Association , citing the DMCA, obtained an injunction on January 17, 2000 against websites that offered DeCSS programs or linked web links to them. DeCSS was developed to play CSS -protected DVDs on Linux and other operating systems. The DMCA mentions something like this as an exception, namely for the purpose of reverse engineering . The lawsuit against the developer of DeCSS, Jon Lech Johansen , ended in an acquittal .
  • Modchips for the Xbox game console are banned on the basis of the DMCA and their manufacturers are prosecuted, since in this way one can bypass the copy protection of the games. Such modifications are also used to install the Linux operating system on an Xbox and to expand the possibilities of the Xbox. That would actually also fall under the exception of reverse engineering.
  • In January 2003, the Chamberlain Group sued Skylink for manufacturing and selling a compatible garage door opener in the form of a remote control . However, Chamberlain lost on August 29, 2003. Although the copy protection was broken by Skylink, the court found that the garage door owner has a right to access his garage even if he lost the remote control.
  • The trial of Dmitri Skljarov also caused a stir . Adobe had reported him for violating the DMCA because he had cracked the copy protection of an e-book format for a Russian company . He was arrested shortly before he planned to leave the United States. In December 2003, his trial also ended in an acquittal.
  • In the election campaign for the US presidency in 2008 , John McCain tried in vain to circumvent the law he had previously supported in order to publish campaign videos on the online video platform YouTube .
  • In the legal dispute between Rapidshare and the online erotic magazine Perfect 10, Rapidshare tried to invoke the DMCA in order to benefit from the "Safe Harbor" regulation (§ 512 (d) of the DMCA). Judge Huff rejected this, however, for formal reasons, as Rapidshare had failed to name a contact person for the US Copyright Office.

Preventing negative reviews and censorship

  • The manufacturer of the GoPro camera warned a website, citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It was requested to refrain from using the brand names 'GoPro' and 'Hero' in a criticism / review of the so-called camera and to remove the article. Otherwise the company will notify the service provider and request the deletion.
  • The Internet search engine operator Google Inc. promptly removed this page from its index without comment and unchecked because of allegations by Scientology that a page of a Scientology critic violated its rights under the DMCA . Critics spoke of censorship .
  • Following claims made by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) in May 2008 against the Wikimedia Foundation that a link in a Wikinews article to a WikiLeaks site violated their rights under the DMCA, a Wikinews administrator immediately removed the relevant link.

Web links

Commons : Digital Millennium Copyright Act  - collection of pictures, videos, and audio files

Legal texts

more links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eric Hilgendorf , Brian Valerius : Computer and Internet criminal law. A floor plan. Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2012, Rn 723 (p. 213).
  2. ^ Stephanie Hrubesch-Millauer: The Swiss Copyright Law - Current Legal Situation and Future Developments. An overview. In: Problems of the new copyright law for science, the book trade and the libraries. Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2008, p. 59 (fn. 30).
  3. ^ Ulrich Dolata : Crisis and Transformation of the Music Industry. In: Internet, Mobile Devices and the Transformation of the Media. Radical change as gradual reconfiguration. Edition Sigma, Berlin 2013, p. 71.
  4. ↑ http://www.golem.de/0410/34402.html Appointment Process (Lexmark / Static Control Components)
  5. ↑ Volker Briegleb: Stage victory for Rapidshare in the US copyright process. May 20, 2010, accessed June 30, 2010 .
  6. ↑ http://www.digitalrev.com/article/gopro-hero-3-vs-sony/Njk3MDQ3MDg_A
  7. ↑ Wikimedia Foundation receives copyright infringement claim from Mormon Church