Cyber Law

Cyber Law

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Technology has been on the verge of growth experiencing rapid transitions throughout the world. With the rise of technology such as the internet, cybercrimes have also increased necessitating the need to enact laws and regulations for their control. The United States has been on the forefront in fighting cybercrimes along with other vices that accompany the use of technology. The digital millennium copyright act is a legislation that was enacted in October the year 1998 by the Congress of the United States (Congress, 1998). The DMCA was targeted to make significant changes to the United States copyright act. The changes were deemed to be necessary in part to bring into compliance the United States copyright law along with the world intellectual property organization copyright treaty and the WIPO performances phonograms treaty. The digital millennium copyright act was also responsible for the strengthening of the legal protection of the intellectual property rights in the wake of the emerging new information communication technologies such as the internet.

The digital millennium copyright act is divided into five notable titles (Litman, 2017). The first title regards the WIPO treaty implementation and compliance. The treaties require the United States to recognize the copyrights of specific works from other countries and those of the tasks that had fallen into the public domain in the United States but not in their native countries. For example, a work whose copyright dates back to 1897 in another country would be considered to be old enough to be in the public domain in the United States, but on the other hand, it may not be so from its land of origin. For the case above the digital millennium copyright act imply that the United States will still recognize the copyright of the work until the time it enters the public domain from the country of origin.

The second change requires that the copyright owners need to register their work with the copyright office before they raise a lawsuit that regards to the infringement of their original work (Joyce et al. 2016). For the copyright owners to comply with the WIPO treaties, the digital millennium copyright act made an exemption of all the foreign works from the WIPO rule, implying that the works created outside the United States do not need to be on file with the United States copyright office before the undertaking of a copyright infringement lawsuit. The WIPO treaties contain the technological provisions with which the United States was required to comply with the requirements applicable to the circumvention of the technological protection measures. The United States proposed an amendment depicting that it is illegal to circumvent the technological measures to which are taken in the prevention of the people from accessing or even copying the works to which they don’t possess the legal permits. However, there is an exception to the rule when the individuals want to make a copy of the work for fair use. For such a case, they may circumvent copy protection technologies though it is never acceptable to circumvent the technologies to gain access to the work. A reasonable explanation for that case would be a hacker who legally hacks a computer program to make a copy from it, but it cannot be allowed for the hacker to hack a computer program to use it whereas there is no permission granted to him. The digital millennium copyright act prohibits an individual from the manufacture of devices or even the software to which are designed to help individuals circumvent the technological protection measures.

Several exceptions do occur in the title one of the digital millennium copyright act (Freund, 2016). The first exception indicates that all law enforcement is wholly accepted from the technological provisions. Furthermore, the non-profit libraries, as well as the educational institutions, are allowed to circumvent the technologies to gain access to the works to decide if they wanted to obtain the legal access to the work. The reverse engineering exception enables the individuals who have prior permission to circumvent the technological protection measures in finding out the difference in the compatibility of the different programs and software. The encryption research exception allows the individuals to bypass the technological protection measures in the determination of their flaws as well as aid in further developments of the better protection technologies. There is also the exception in the protection of minors to which allows the court to impose the technological protections that safeguard the children from the materials from the internet. Personal privacy is another exception to which helps the individuals to circumvent the technologies in the times to which the protected work is capable of disseminating personal data regarding their online activities. Besides, the security testing exception allows a person to circumvent the protection measures to which are placed on a computer or to any network when the owner grants them with permission for the sole purpose of security testing.

The WIPO treaties on the technological provisions, besides, require the United States to the creation of specific protection provisions for the copyright management information which is any information about the work outside of its actual content (Haggart, 2014). The requirements include things like the title, author as well as the terms and the conditions for the use. The digital millennium copyright act amendment further makes it legal for the alteration of the copyright management information that is attached to the electronic works without any permission or however to knowingly distribute the works in which the copyright management information has been altered illegally. There also exists the exception for the law enforcement agencies as well as an exception for certain broadcast stations and the cable systems to which have the capability of altering the copyright management information where there are no intentions towards any infringement. Finally, title one of the digital millennium copyright act calls for the United States copyright office to report back to the Congress on the integrity of the new technological laws a year after the passage of the act.

Title two of the DMCA involves the online copyright infringement liability limitation targeting the internet service providers for their responsibility for the copyright infringement performed by their respective subscribers. The digital millennium copyright act stipulates that the internet service providers are not responsible for the actions of their clients as long as they have met the required number of provisions (Bridy & Keller, 2017). The internet service providers first have to meet at least one of the four definitions of an internet provider as stipulated by the digital millennium copyright act. Each of the four definitions possesses a different set of the provisions that the internet service provider must have to comply with. They then have to inform their users as well as carry out a policy to which states that the individuals who are caught using their services for the infringement for most of the times, their subscription to the service will call for cancellation. The title two of the digital millennium copyright act provides the copyright holder for a new right to call upon the courts to subpoena an internet service provider for the identification of an alleged copyright infringer. Title three of the digital millennium copyright act involves the computer maintenance or the repair. The section provides the owner of the computer or the lessee of the computer the right and the permission to copy software and programs to which have been lawfully installed on the respective computer for maintenance or even repair. It further stipulates that once the computer has been fixed and the copied program served its purpose, it must be destroyed as it has completed the intended purpose.

The title four of the DMCA has the stipulations for the miscellaneous provisions (Gocha, 2017). The first provision affirms the copyrights office’s authority in carrying out the policy and the international tasks to which it has already been taking care for a series of years. The second provision tends to be related to the ephemeral recordings for broadcast. The copies of the recordings are made to simplify the broadcasting process implying that a radio station would upload all the songs that are in its playlist to a hard drive such that the DJ is not required to fumble with the CDs and thus automating the program. The digital millennium copyright act makes some amendments to the copyright act providing for similar recordings to be made in the digital transmission facilitation. The digital millennium copyright act also has the provisions that allow for the broadcasters to request for the copies of the recordings from the copyright owner when they contain the technological protection measures against copying. In the case to which the tapes cannot be provided, the radio station is provided with the right to bypass the protection technology to make their copies.

The third provision in the fourth title of the miscellaneous section is aimed at the Congress’s interest in the promotion for the distant education. The provision called for the copyright office for the consultation of several relevant parties on the subject and later return a report to the Congress within six months of the passage of the digital millennium copyright act. The fourth provision amends the copyright law regarding the libraries’ right of making copies of the phono-records. Under the digital millennium copyright act, the libraries are allowed to make up to three copies of a phono-record provided that they can adequately label the prints with the notice of copyright. However, in case the prints are in the digital format, they may not be removed from the library premises. The library is also allowed to make several copies to replace the lost or the damaged works as well as for the goal of restoring the works to which are in obsolete formats, to which however the digital copies are not allowed to leave the library premises.

The fifth provision makes the amendments to the copyright law and is aimed at addressing the issues regarding webcasting. In the year 1995, the Congress passed the digital performance right in sound recordings act under which the services are providing the digital transmissions are required to pay a performance royalty to which the digital broadcast is exempted. The provisions imply that the owners of the sound recording copyrights were allowed to collect loyalties for the digital performances of their works. The digital performance right in sound recordings act covered three categories of the digital transmission that included the broadcast transmission, subscription transmissions and as well as the on-demand transmissions. Webcasting didn’t fit precisely on the provisions’ categories and thus necessitated the digital millennium copyright act amend the digital performance right in sound recordings act such that the webcasting would fit into the category of the eligible non-subscription transmissions. Besides, the digital millennium copyright act as well created a statutory license allowing for the digital transmission organizations to make more than one ephemeral recordings. The sixth provision on the miscellaneous section of the digital millennial copyright act is aimed to the application of the motion picture businesses. The provision addresses the situations where the producers become unable to compensate the writers, actors as well as the directors to whom are owed the residual payments. In the past, the production companies often ignored the contractual agreements that said that the movie distributor would automatically take the payments if the producer were unable to distribute. The digital millennium copyright act, therefore, requires the distributors always to fulfill the duty of distribution in the assumption that they know or whatsoever should have known ahead of time that it would be their responsibility in the case of the distributor’s failure to distribute the movie.

Title five of the digital millennium copyright act directs its concerns to the protection of specific original designs. The title is also known as the Vessel Haul Design Protection Act to which adds a new category of the copyright table work to the Copyright Act. The act allows for the protection of the original designs of the useful articles to which are regarded to be attractive or distinct in appearance. In the amendment, the valuable materials are limited to the hulls of the vessels that are no greater than 200 feet in their length. The designs are protected in the event they have been publicly displayed in use but loses their copyright in the event they don’t get registered within two years of public release. The designs get to be protected for ten years upon their publication as the VHDPA was set to expire two years after the enactment of the digital millennium copyright act. The copyright office was thus ordered to conduct two joint studies with the patent and the trademark office in the evaluation of the impact of the VHDPA during its two years run.

The digital millennium copyright act is a controversial law as it contains some inadequacies as well as the adequacies (Kulesza, 2016). The digital millennium copyright act receives more than its fair share of criticism, but on the other hand, it is a reliable method to which it aids in curbing and dealing with the problematic online legal subjects. The digital millennium copyright act is a law to which is designed to encourage the online users and the sites to work with the copyright holders through the digital millennium copyright act agents for the protection of the copyrighted materials. In exchange for the provision of such assistance, the sites along with the online subscribers are provided with the immunity from the copyright infringement claims. The positive impacts of the digital millennium copyright act depend on a person’s perspective in regards to the acts use. For the copyright holders, the law has a provision for a mechanism for obtaining the removal of the infringing material on the web at a low cost and as well in a more straightforward manner. Under the act, the copyright holder can provide notice of the copyright infringement to the site or the service in question. The process provides for a significant benefit to the copyright holder as the infringing material gets removed and the person can avoid the cost of a lawsuit.

On the other side, the digital millennium copyright act has negative aspects. One of the negative elements includes abuse. The individuals, companies, and groups use the takedown provisions of the digital millennium copyright act as a hammer against anyone who posts their content, even if there is a legal basis for doing such an act (Tsesis, 2017). Since the sites can avoid being sued in the event they take down the alleged offending content; they tend to do so even if there was no advantage to the infringement claim. The copyright abuse is an enormous negative aspect of the digital millennium copyright act as it acts as a form of censorship and is, therefore, is the biggest failing of the law without any doubt. The negative impact is the misuse of the law and thus to reduce the cases of abuse, strict measures have to be taken to the infringing personnel through thorough scrutiny such that the cases are made to be genuine and not malicious. For this case, it would be advisable to set the penalties to when the respective offenders may be charged with along with -a procedure ensuring the offenders are brought to justice. Also, a procedure in the manner to which the copyright should be obtained should be spelled out reducing bureaucracy in the process of gaining copyright.

The digital millennium copyright act is a relatively novel approach to dealing with a challenging subject though it is not a perfect law. The goal of the lawmaker at this point should be focused on the reduction of the negatives through fixation and as well emphasize the positives. Since the law has been misused by a majority of the people as well as groups, a critical change would be necessary such that the loopholes will be closed and that the individuals will not take advantage over the others to sue them in the court of law. A law, indicating the degree of offense along with the punishment would do a better act that would serve all the people without ambiguity and bias. My recommendation would thus lie on the improvement of the existing law to reduce the misuse and thus reduce the cybercrime activities.

References

Bridy, A., & Keller, D. (2017). US Copyright Office Section 512 Study: Comments in Response to Second Notice of Inquiry.

Congress, U. S. (1998). Digital millennium copyright act. Public Law, 105(304), 112.

Freund, K. (2016). “Fair use is legal use”: Copyright negotiations and strategies in the fan-vidding community. New Media & Society, 18(7), 1347-1363.

Gocha, A. J. (2017). A Modern System for Resolving Online Copyright Infringement Disputes: Administrative Rulemaking and Adjudication, a One-Stop Fix to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. IDEA, 58, 131.

Haggart, B. (2014). Copyfight: the global politics of digital copyright reform (Vol. 44). University of Toronto Press.

Joyce, C., Ochoa, T. T., Carroll, M. W., Leaffer, M. A., & Jaszi, P. (2016). Copyright law (p. 85). Carolina Academic Press.

Kulesza, J. (2016). Rethinking cyberlaw: a new vision for Internet law.

Litman, J. (2017). 2017 Postscript to Digital Copyright.

Tsesis, A. (2017). Social Media Accountability for Terrorist Propaganda. Fordham L. Rev., 86, 605.