DMCA protected - what is it?

Often we can see DMCA Protected on its page in the browser. What could this mean? The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, is a legislative act passed on 14.05.1998 by the US Senate as a response to the demands of the information society, and, interestingly, it was unanimously approved, without any objection. At the same time, the document increased almost tenfold during its development, which indicates its inordinate importance for the American state.

Why was DMCA Protected adopted , what happened? As soon as the number of users of the World Wide Web has grown enormously to hundreds of millions, when each of these users could download whatever they wanted without difficulty and free of charge, the rightholders began to incur serious losses. This situation also affected the economy of the state, where one fifth of the budget revenues come from providers of intellectual services. DMCA Protected brought this chaos to an end.

DMCA Protected: what is it, the basics

First, a framework of civil liability was established. The intruder could now foresee the results of his activity and should be ready to incur a punishment, which, I must say, is by no means formal. Secondly, a ban was set to bypass protective equipment ("anti-piracy" equipment). And, thirdly, the means that make such a violation possible were banned.

Positive results

After the entry into force of the law, the provider ceased to be responsible for the actions of its users, if it immediately took the required measures, did not receive financial compensation from the offender's unlawful actions and did not have a statement from the right holder. It is clear that under such conditions, the existence of video hosting is impossible, since their owners would only deal with the settlement of litigation.

To top it off, providers have ceased to be responsible for caching information. True, this point in our time has not yet been settled in most of the legislations of world states.

DMCA Protected - what is it? Negative moments

One such is the numerous notifications from the DMCA about copyright infringement to major global search engines. Such notifications are often false, but it is necessary to react to them without fail, and this brings companies a lot of costs. In addition, there is still no liability for such a false signal.

In addition, the act introduces a serious criminal responsibility - up to ten years' imprisonment. Although the world community still does not have clear restrictions on the dissemination of information in the network, the legislator simply equated intellectual property with physical property ownership, which, of course, is far from commensurate and not equally socially harmful.

And one more minus: a lot of Internet resources go from responsibility to offshore zones. They register on other domains and have their servers in states more tolerant of "pirates" than the US.

Results

Analyzing the pros and cons of the law, we can say that it establishes a certain balance between Internet users and rightholders.

It is also important to mention DMCA Protected that this legislation is opposed not only to copying, but also introduces a ban on distortion of information that spreads over the Internet. In contrast to material carriers, it is very difficult to determine the source of information on the network. This will require a long study of the cache of search engines. Therefore, one of the main tasks of the Law on copyright in the digital age was the establishment of a system for recording the content of the source, establishing its author, and then introducing legal responsibility for the purposeful change and falsification of the original data.

Even with all its drawbacks, the appearance of such a project is a positive phenomenon in the information community. But it is very important not to infringe the interests of all participants of the Internet community.

At this time, the North American legislators are working on a new project called Stop Online Piracy Act. This legislation will have to replace the DMCA. And SOPA will further tighten the punishment for Internet pirates.

We hope that this article has given you an exhaustive answer to the question of what DMCA Protected means and why this law was adopted.