In 1998 the US congress amended the US copyright laws to take in to account all of the various changes that have come about due to the new digital nature of much of our creative content production. You can read more about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act here, although a good short explanation of the highlights can be found here. As you will see, you don’t need to be a Intellectual Property Lawyer to tell that this was a major blow to the initial openness of information brought about by the internet. It is interesting that the main proponents of this were commercial interests, while those who opposed it were academics, scientists, and librarians – the same people that have gotten behind the Open Access journal movement. As you will see in your readings this week, an argument has been made (and failed) that the founding principle behind establishing a copyright law in the United States (and in other capitalist countries) was to force companies and individuals to share their work. A copyright was supposed to be treated similarly to a patent – in return for sharing your knowledge, you would receive a limited monopoly over that knowledge (or creative content) for a limited period of time. However, through the lobbying efforts of Walt Disney and other media giants, copyright laws have been extended and expanded to the point that some critics believe the system is now broken.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act further limited the non-paying public from accessing this content and prohibits the circumvention of copyright protections (like encrypted commercial DVDs or CDs), which make it possible to produce a perfect digital copy of a movie or song. On the one hand, this is of course fair – it protects those who have invested a great deal of money in producing a film or album. Yet, the language of the DMCA is so broad, that it has the effect of limiting access to those who cannot pay.
As protections have gotten stronger (both technologically and legally) the cost of purchasing content has generally risen. Sure, the music companies and others have suffered greatly from the drop in CD sales and film purchases have dropped with file-sharing networks. Yet, it does seem that there should still be room for “fair use” by individuals who are acting within their rights to own a backup copy as was the case with analog media (you were allowed, for instance to make a cassette recording of a record without the fear of being sued by the record company). Now, there is a difference (at least I would argue) with making a copy for personal use (say an MP3 copy of a CD for use on your iPod) and distributing those files to millions of people over the internet or (in the extreme case) selling illegal digital copies for profit. Yet, the DMCA does not make a provision for creating a personal copy of digital media. I would be curious to hear the opinions of others on this matter – either in the comments or in class on Tuesday.
- Here are some other things to think about for Tuesday:
- What are the limits of copyright protection?
- As an online exhibit designer, what do you need to know about copyright?
- How can you protect your own or your institution’s intellectual property?
- What do you think about the Open Access movement? Does it have enough support to fend off the interests of Hollywood?
ADDENDUM: Check out this interesting lawsuit by Viacom v. YouTube. What do you think about this?