Dmca Failure

Words: 969
Pages: 4

Introduction The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, often shortened as the acronym DMCA, is a United States law that was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in October of 1998 after being passed unanimously through the United States Senate. This law was intended to “to begin updating national laws for the digital era” (Congressional Record, pg. 18873) by reforming copyright laws that referred to intellectual property concerning music, art, publications, and many other forms of media as part of the effort that over 150 countries came together to negotiate two treaties concerning the World Intellectual Property Organization. These two treaties were known as the Copyright Treaty and the Performance and Phonograms Treaty. The two …show more content…
Upset with the loss in profits, the entertainment industries pushed for change on a national and world scale by prompting for legislative efforts to help their cause. The voices of the entertainment industries were finally heard when the government enacted the DMCA. While evaluating the purpose of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, I will determine if the implementation of the law was successful by covering the effect that the law had on copyright law, analyzing its strengths and weaknesses as well as providing recommendations for improving the law for the …show more content…
House Representative Howard Coble, a North Carolinian representing the Republican Party, introduced the bill on July 29, 1997, before it was considered by the House Judiciary Committee and the House Commerce Committee (Denicola, pg. 4). The existing systems in place made it very easy for consumers to purchase one copy of say a musical CD for example and upload the music tracks online and share them with whom they chose. They could share the music either for free or charge a cheaper fee than the original if they desired. The breakdown in the market occurs when an individual creates a product with the intention of financially benefiting from their product but does not receive the maximum output because of those who pirate the product for free. As the world got closer and closer to the end of the 20th century, technological advances in working around copyright protections in place became more commonplace. In their journal article Catch 1201: A Legislative History and Content Analysis of the DMCA Exemption Proceedings, Bill Herman and Oscar Gandy make the assertion that “this upswing in copyright’s visibility comes largely in the wake of a disruptive technology,” (Herman & Gandy, pg. 123). The increasing infringement was a direct result of the new technology