Tag: DMCA Week
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DMCA Week: A second orphan works problem?
The orphan works problem in copyright is real and serious. Several congressional hearings and a Copyright Office inquiry that drew hundreds of thoughtful comments—not to mention countless articles and blog posts—attest to that fact. This attention is heartening, and while orphan works legislation seems to have died this year, I’m optimistic that the next Congress…
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DMCA Week: Where's My DVD Jukebox?
A difficult challenge in thinking about public policy is understanding which innovations have not happened as a result of bad government policies. For example, it’s generally believed that the Bell phone monopoly stifled innovation in the telecommunications sector during the 1950s and 1960s. But if we had been assessing things from the standpoint of the…
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DMCA Week, Part I: How the DMCA Was Born
Ten years ago tomorrow, on October 28, 1998, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was signed into law. The DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions, which became 17 USC Section 1201, made it a crime under most circumstances to “circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to” a copyrighted work, or to “traffic in” circumvention tools. In the…