Happy Birthday, DMCA!
July 06, 2008 Filed in: Copyright
Enacted in 1998 to update U.S. copyright law to
recognize the digital context, few had an intimation
how central the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
would become to the national debate on copyright; for
only a year later, (the original) Napster was
unleashed on the world...
At the Tech Policy Summit held May, Fred von Lohman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation expressed the sentiment that the DMCA got it about right (even realizing, as we’ve seen, that there many who believe it went too far or not far enough) in terms of the balance of responsibilities between rightsholders and online service providers: that fundamentally there is sufficient “looseness” in the framework to permit innovation to flourish. (Would TiVo exist, if, before offering its service, it had had to go to each rightsholder to ask permission to carry content?) We see the innovation everywhere: Google, YouTube, eBay, the Slingbox … We will need to continue the national discussion to keep seeking an appropriate balance. In the mean time, it’s been an interesting ten years. Happy birthday, DMCA!
Worth reading: “Who Will Own Your Next Good Idea?” Atlantic Monthly, September 1998. Published mere months before the DMCA was enacted, it brilliantly covers the underlying issues about copyright; and is, in many ways, prescient.
(Of course, the DMCA covers a lot more than just how rightsholders and ISPs interact... there’s the anti-circumvention issue, for example, that though rather quiescent in recent times - or perhaps has now mostly just become a fact of life - was hugely controversial at the time.)
At the Tech Policy Summit held May, Fred von Lohman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation expressed the sentiment that the DMCA got it about right (even realizing, as we’ve seen, that there many who believe it went too far or not far enough) in terms of the balance of responsibilities between rightsholders and online service providers: that fundamentally there is sufficient “looseness” in the framework to permit innovation to flourish. (Would TiVo exist, if, before offering its service, it had had to go to each rightsholder to ask permission to carry content?) We see the innovation everywhere: Google, YouTube, eBay, the Slingbox … We will need to continue the national discussion to keep seeking an appropriate balance. In the mean time, it’s been an interesting ten years. Happy birthday, DMCA!
Worth reading: “Who Will Own Your Next Good Idea?” Atlantic Monthly, September 1998. Published mere months before the DMCA was enacted, it brilliantly covers the underlying issues about copyright; and is, in many ways, prescient.
(Of course, the DMCA covers a lot more than just how rightsholders and ISPs interact... there’s the anti-circumvention issue, for example, that though rather quiescent in recent times - or perhaps has now mostly just become a fact of life - was hugely controversial at the time.)