DMCA: An Introduction
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
DMCA: Background Information
Title 17 of US code
Passed on October 28, 1998
Bans production and dissemination of
technology that can circumvent security
measures to protect copyright.
Heightens penalties on copyright
infringement.
DMCA: The Law
No person shall circumvent a technological
measure that … controls access to a work…
No person shall manufacture, import, or traffic a
component that:
– Is primarily designed to circumvent a security measure
that protects a copyrighted work.
– Has only limited commercial use other than to break
copyright protections.
– Is used, with the knowledge of the creator, that it will be
used to circumvent copyright protections.
DMCA: The Law (2)
Exceptions to the above laws (Government):
– Law enforcement
– Government intelligence agencies
– Other government activities & agencies;
Federal, State, or any political subdivision of a
State.
DMCA: The Law (3)
Exceptions to the above laws (Civilian):
– Reverse Engineering
Must lawfully obtain copyrighted work.
May circumvent the laws to:
– Identify and Analyze elements of a program to make it work
with another independent program(s).
– Circumvented material must not be already available to the
person engaging in the reverse engineering.
DMCA: The Law (4)
Copyright Management: name or identifying
information about a work, name of the
author, terms and conditions of the work,
etc.
– No person shall remove the above items from a
copyrighted work.
Movie, music, software, etc.
– No person shall distribute a work knowing that
the copyright management information has
been altered or deleted.
DMCA: The Law (5)
Copyright infringement liability and limitation
(Introduction).
– ISPs cannot be held liable for copyright
violations on their network if they do not know
about it.
– ISPs cannot be held liable for copyright
violations in their system cache, as long as
It is committed by someone other than the ISP.
The storage is carried out automatically and not by
employees.
DMCA: Why is it controversial?
DeCSS case.
Even if you link to material regarded as a
violation of copyright, you may be held
liable.
– 2600.com case and injunction.
Seen as restrictive for innovation.
– Dmitry Sklyarov
DMCA
Online Copyright Infringement Liability
Limitation
Information Residing on Systems or
Networks At Direction of Users
A service provider shall not be liable for
monetary relief.
Injunctive for infringement of copyright by
reason of the storage at the direction of a
user of material that resides on a system or
network.
User does not have actual knowledge that
the material or an activity using the material
is infringing.
Upon obtaining knowledge user should
remove, or disable access to the material.
User does not receive a financial benefit
directly attributable to the infringing activity.
Elements of Notification
A notification of claimed infringement must
be a written communication provided to the
designated agent of a service provider.
A physical or electronic signature of a
person authorized to act on behalf of the
owner of an exclusive right.
A statement that the complaining party has
good faith.
A statement that the information in the
notification is accurate.
Information reasonably sufficient to permit
the service provider to contact the
complaining party.
Limitation on Liability of Nonprofit
and Educational Institutions
When a public or other nonprofit institution
of higher education is a service provider,
and when a faculty member or graduate
student who is an employee of such
institution is performing a teaching or
research function.
Replacement of Removed or
Disabled Material and Limitation on
Other Liability
No liability for taking down generally
Exception
Contents of counter notification
Note on the DeCSS Case
Decode Content Scramble System
Notes on the DeCSS Case
Digital Versatile Disks (DVDs) can hold full
length motion pictures
Market standard use the Content Scramble
System (CSS) for encoding
Decoder was Windows/Mac compliant only
Jan Johansen, a Linux user, wrote the
DeCSS object code for personal use and
published the code on the Web
The Lawsuit
Suit brought against the “hacker” website 2600.com who
published security flaws and links to the object code
Industry afraid movies will be downloaded on Napster-like
programs
Plaintiffs portrayed DeCSS as a “piracy tool” and a “digital
crowbar”
Defendants made First Amendment argument
Court ruled that DeCSS was similar to “publishing a bank
vault combination”
Links were seen as giving the code to the users directly
The Appeal
Second Circuit of Appeals noted that
computer code has both a speech and a
functional component
Court ruled that as a strict writing, it has
First Amendment protections
The functional component can allow an
individual to violate the law
Court upheld the injunction
Considerations and More Info
Will this have an effect on the advancement
of Computer Science?
Should coders be able to advance code that
can be used for illegal purposes
Can find more details at
http://www.2600.com/dvd/docs/
Digital Music and
Peer-to-Peer File Sharing
Richard A. Sapinello
Client Server Architecture Model
Internet content (books, movies, music, documents,
web pages) are typically disseminated by means of
the client server model
- information is “served” on a request from a central
system to a personal computer
- with the expansion of internet the burden on servers
has increased dramatically
- with the server down, information becomes
unavailable, and thus it is easy to control the unlawful
distribution of copyrighted material
P2P Architecture Model
In P2P architecture any computer in the network can
function as a distribution point
Enable direct communications among individual personal
computers relying on the internet infrastructure
The request for a piece of information is passed along from
computer to computer until the file is located and a copy is
sent along to the requester’s system
Unloads heavy traffic from servers
Benefits to people being able to have access to information
quickly, easily, and cheaply
P2P Architecture Model (2)
It is difficult to enforce copyright laws with a
P2P
– difficult to trace the movements of files in the
network
– no central server to shut down
P2P treats all nodes in the network as equals
and disabling one node will have minimal impact
on the network
MP3 File Format
MP3 is the shortened name for MPEG-1 Layer III (or MPEG Audio
Layer III) and is an audio subset of the MPEG industry standard
developed by ISO (Industry Standards Organization) and became an official
standard in 1992 as part of the MPEG-1 standard.
Fraunhofer Gesellschaft (FhG), a German company holds key patents
regarding the technology.
Music has always been stored on physical media, but digitization and
MP3 format permit proliferation of “containerless” music
The compressed files are as much as 20 times smaller than the
originals, making music candidate number one of file sharing based on
P2P architecture
Music Sharing Applications
The most famous program was Napster, but it was not a
true P2P application
Morpheus, Grokster, KaZaA, eDonkey, iMesh, Shareaza
are among the numerous P2P applications
KaZaA is the most popular software with over 275 million
users and about 3 million added each week
For the music industry the lethal combination of easily
reproducible digital music files, MP3 format enabling
storage, and the P2P architecture is a recipe for disaster
The Music Industry Fights Back
In the fall of 2003 the RIAA (Recording
Industry Association of America) filed a lawsuit
against 261 individuals accused of illegally
distributing music over the internet
Being unable prosecute the creators of the
P2P programs, RIAA shifted focus to the
users of the software
The lawsuits targeted the heaviest users,
hoping to achieve pedagogical effect
The Movie Industry Fights Back (2)
The music industry’s campaign was met
with widespread criticism
Only 36% of the US population believe that
file sharing is stealing
Many software developers are rushing to
create new systems to share music more
covertly