But the resulting law was too broad, ensnaring legitimate research activities. It showed that the DMCA had become a go-to strategy for companies facing embarrassing revelations about their products." This critique centers around the idea that research into any one topic is disallowed due to the extreme copyright laws that the DMCA supports.
Support for the DMCA stems from the fact that Internet Providers and host companies are immune from DMCA punishment. This is good according to Kravets (2008). He argued that "the DMCA's separate notice-and-takedown provision has proven even more crucial to the growth of the internet. The provision grants immunity to so-called "intermediaries" -- ISPs, for example -- for any copyright infringement by their users. To earn that so-called "safe harbor," the intermediary such as video-sharing site YouTube must promptly remove material if the copyright holder sends a takedown notice. But the company can restore the content if the user certifies that it's non-infringing, and the copyright claimant fails to sue. These two protections for intermediaries have been absolutely crucial for giving us the internet today," says Fred von Lohmann, an internet attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which just released its report on the DMCA. "You could not run a blog without these. You couldn't run MySpace, AOL without these two things."
Festa (2003) reported a case where the DMCA resulted...
Thomas Michael Whitehead was found guilty of selling hardware that could access DirecTV satellite broadcasts without paying for them. The report noted that "In the Whitehead case, the jury found that the defendant had bought software that reprogrammed DirecTV access cards to circumvent their security features. He then sold reprogrammed DirecTV access cards nationwide, violating a DMCA provision that bans the dissemination of technology whose main purpose is to get around copyright protections." It appears that the DMCA's reach is far and impactful as Whitehead faced up to 30 years in prison for this crime. Unfortunately this case will to little to deter others from pirating copyright material in the future.
References
"The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998." U.S. Copyright Office. Viewed 25 April 2013.
Felten, E. (2013). The Chilling Effects of the DMCA. Slate, 29 Mar 2013. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/03/dmca_chilling_effects_ho w_copyright_law_hurts_security_research.html
Festa, P. (2003). Jury convicts man in DMCA case. Cnet, 23 Sep 2003. Retrieved from http://news.cnet.com/2100-1025-5080807.html
Kravets, D. (2008). 10 Years Late, Misunderstood DMCA is the Law That Saved the Web. Wired.com 27 Oct 2008. Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/10/ten- years-later/
