The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
The DMCA, signed into law by President Clinton in 1998,
is divided into five titles and addresses a number of significant copyright-related
issues, some of which relate directly to educators. The U.S. copyright office
provides a long but readable summary of the act (http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf).
One area in which the DMCA may impact educators deals with
liability issues for online service providers (OSPs). DMCA
places new limitations on liability for copyright infringement
for OSPs. Many institutions of higher education qualify as
OSPs under the DMCA through actions such as adoption of rules
regarding "notice and takedown" procedures for inappropriate
content on campus web servers, adoption of appropriate policies
regarding termination of accounts of repeat copyright offenders,
and adoption of policies to accommodate copyright owners and
their rights to protect their works. The DMCA benefits these
qualifying institutions in four separate areas: transitory
digital communications, system caching, information location
tools, and information on systems or networks. The most important
area may be the "transitory digital communication"
area because it provides protection for the OSP when it "merely
acts as a data conduit, transmitting digital information from
one point on a network to another at someone else's request."
In other words, if a person uses a university’s network
to illegally publish copyrighted material, the DMCA limits
the university’s liability.
However, not all aspects of the DMCA may be beneficial to
educators. For example, the DMCA outlaws the circumvention
of encrypted digital works such as motion pictures, sound
recordings, online books, etc. Movie studios, record companies,
and many artists insist that the statute is necessary to slow
the alarming increase in the rate of piracy of films, music
and other protected works over the Internet. While the intent
of the law is certainly reasonable, many people feel that
the use of many of these materials in multi-media educational
settings, in-class performances, transmission, display, and
library photocopying that may otherwise have fallen under
the “fair use” exemption may now be at risk.
To read Jon Beedle’s thoughts about the DMCA, click
here
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