10 Years Later, Misunderstood DMCA Is the Law That "Saved the Web"

mattOzan writes "On the tenth anniversary of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act [PDF], Wired Magazine posits that the DMCA should be praised for catalyzing the interactive '2.0' Web that we enjoy today. While acknowledging the troublesome 'anti-circumvention' provision of the act, they claim that any harm caused by that is far outweighed by the act's "notice-and-takedown" provision and the safe harbor that this provides to intermediary ISPs. Fritz Attaway, policy adviser for the MPAA weighed in saying 'It's not perfect. But it's better than nothing.'"

Comments

To be fair

[CSMatt]

The DMCA is an umbrella act of at least five different acts (well, four and a few miscellaneous stuff). The article's praise is for the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act, whereas most of the criticism over the past decade is actually aimed at the WIPO Copyright and Performances and Phonograms Treaties Implementation Act.

Re:Safe Harbor made innovation work

[TrekkieGod]

There is - perjury. The problem is that nobody pursues it.

Everyone misunderstands that clause. The penalty is not perjury if you don't own the copyright. The penalty is perjury if you didn't have a "good faith" belief that you own the copyright. So if you send your take-down to something that has a similar name to your movie, you can prove that you had a "good faith" believe that it was your movie, even if it was something else.

THAT is why nobody pursues it. It's almost impossible to prove that the person did committed perjury. They really need to fix that clause because, as it stands, it's completely toothless.