DMCA: Digital Millennium Copyright Act

Technology can be a bane at times. It helps people to foster unhealthy habits. Take, for instance, online piracy. We might download a copy of our favorite song with the help of appropriate file sharing technologies. However, we forget the hard work imparted by certain others in producing the song. The owner of any intellectual property must obtain rewards for his or her efforts. If not, they might simply stop coming up with newer ideas! It was tough to control piracy and people have their own reasons for downloading copyrighted content.

Piracy was rampant in the United Stated by the 90s. The federal government was facing an excessive binding power from everyone to end the widespread piracy. Although the situation was no different in the other countries, the government had no other option than to yield to the demands of artists and establishments - as the United States housed more than a dozen production companies! The DMCA came into effect by 1998. The law was quite exhaustive, but it included certain elements that ensured the rightful acquisition of earnings.

So, what does the DMCA deal with? By now, you might have realized that it had something to do with eradicating piracy. The number of people, who searched for direct download links on a web search engine, was grossly small. Most of the cyber citizens had access to specialized software programs that enabled them to find any movie or audio file, including software suites at the mere click of a few buttons. The entire procedure was streamlined and if one had access to the internet, they could download whatever they required, whenever they needed them. The DMCA primarily deals with the production of such software programs that helped the commoners to gain access to all sorts of pirated materials.

In other words, if a company or a software programmer came up with a software suite that fulfilled the above-mentioned criteria, they might face jail time and fines. Suitable copyright laws protected all the audio, the video and software that were downloaded off the internet. Thus by developing a platform that enabled the easy download of these copyrighted contents, the software programmer or the company is effectively breaking a good share of the laws. Needless to state but it was a punishable offense (it still is)! I am certain that many readers might be aware of services like Napster that qualified anyone with access to the internet to download audio files in a moment!

After the implementation of DMCA, Napster became a paid music download service. Account holders must pay nominal amounts on monthly or per song basis. A portion of the earnings will be shared to the copyright holders. It created a win-win situation - people could download their favorite tracks for a fraction of the original cost and the artists who created them were also paid for their efforts!

Even though the act was effective by 1998, it had to face stiff resistance from many. Certain companies that produced films came forward with extensive complaints about the ineffective nature of the act.