The Digital Millennium Copyright Act:.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act was implemented by Congress in 1998. It was enacted in an effort to further the World Intellectual Property Organization's goal to protect information and prevent piracy of any kind. The DMCA's main purpose was to protect the digital property of copyright holders. This goal is extensively outlined in Section 1201. It was written specifically to ban both acts of circumvention and tools that can potentially be used to promote circumvention. It is this Section 1201 that I have a big problem with. It has stifled meaningful research, infringed on fair use, and has been manipulated by major corporations to suppress competition and innovation. .
In the past, the federal government has been trying to crack down on "piracy" by catching and convicting criminals. However, this method is slow and tedious, and it often does not provide results. Realizing this, Congress implemented a new policy that takes away any and all tools that could contribute to copyright infringement; thus, hitting piracy at the source. During July 2001, Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested for designing a program that took e-books from the internet and transformed them into .PDF files (Acrobat Reader Files). This was a violation of the DMCA because it defeated copyright guards embedded in the e-book software. Although the program was designed for backup purposes only, Sklyarov was arrested and charged with violating the DMCA for making a program that "could potentially be used illegally by a third party that he"d never met" (EFF). After six months, Sklyarov was acquitted and released from prison, but formal charges where brought against his employer, Elcomsoft. Ultimately, all charges were dropped, however, because that incident occurred, foreign computer scientists from around the world avoided the United States for fear of "legal liabilities resulting from the DMCA" (PC Computing).
