DMCA, The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, is an amendment of the United States copyright law that was enacted in response to the exigency of increasing copyright infractions, particularly due to the growing ease of information sharing. Essentially, the DMCA updated U.S. copyright law to meet demands of the "Digital Age" and to make the U.S. compliant with requirements outlined at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and treaties signed in 1996.

History

Overview of the legal provisions

Pros and Cons

Fandom

Music piracy

Academia

Sources

About Us

Responses to Professor Greg Downey's Questions

Why should you care about the DMCA? How could copyright law affect anyone but lawyers? Well, have you ever:

• Copied a CD for a friend?
• Made a mix tape or CD?
• Tried to rip a CD onto your computer or MP3 player?
• Downloaded music from the Internet?

Or have you:

• Recorded a television show on your VCR or DVR?
• Tried to copy DVD material onto a VHS tape?
• Watched a clip from a movie or television show on a site like YouTube?

What about:

• Tried to copy and paste text from an e-book or Amazon's sample pages of a book?
• Written a story about your favorite movie or TV characters?

In the digital age, most people have encountered at least one of these situations. Copyright law like the DMCA plays a major role in what we are allowed to do with media (both legally and illegally obtained). It determines what technology is made available and what happens to those who break the rules. This wiki is an attempt to explore the origins and applications of the DMCA and how it affects our lives.

This Wiki is developed by a group of students as a class project.