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What Is the Purpose of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act?
Find out the primary aim of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998. Then, get insight into how the age of generative AI could potentially change the DMCA.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and should not be used in place of legal advice. If you have a copyright-related issue, consult a lawyer.
With the internet beginning to revolutionize the way we shared information in the ‘90s, it became clear that the United States needed to adapt copyright laws to the digital environment. Enter the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998, a federal law protecting copyright holders from online infringement.
This law covers a range of copyrighted material, from text to music, images, and videos. It imposes strict penalties to discourage would-be violators. However, it’s not without critics.
Some have been calling for copyright reform for years, and these calls have only become louder with the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI). So, in its current state, is the DMCA still serving its original purpose?
Learn about the purpose of the DMCA and whether it’s still relevant in the age of AI.
When it comes to protecting intellectual property, the DMCA serves three main purposes:
Let’s take a closer look at each of these below.
Copyright law has always been about preventing others from reproducing, distributing, or otherwise profiting from an author’s original work. However, the digital age brought with it a new set of challenges.
One provision of the DMCA makes it illegal to avoid, remove, or otherwise bypass the access control technology that authors may use to protect their work (decrypting encrypted text or descrambling scrambled content).
If someone happens to create and distribute a device that allows them to get around this technology, the DMCA criminalizes that as well.
For example, the creators of peer-to-peer file-sharing programs like BitTorrent have lost copyright cases under this provision.
The Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA) provision of the DMCA added Section 512 to the Copyright Act to protect internet service providers (ISPs). It provides four ‘safe harbors’ that allow ISPs to avoid liability for the copyright-infringing actions of users.
An ISP must meet a safe harbor’s criteria to benefit from this provision. For example, ISPs can often avoid liability if they can prove they had no idea about the copyright violation. This is also where the DMCA takedown notice comes into play.
When a copyright holder informs an ISP about possible infringement, it must promptly respond by ensuring the removal of the stolen material.
If a user believes their content is being flagged and removed by mistake, they also have options. They can challenge the accusation in hopes of restoring their work.
Copyright management information is used to identify the origin of copyrighted material. It helps distinguish the work from others, like a serial number on a car.
Copyright management information includes the following:
Under the DMCA, you can’t use symbols or numbers to refer to these facts either. This provision helps prevent people from changing these details before sharing a copyrighted work with others.
According to the attorneys at Frost Brown Todd, there’s a big difference between the internet of the ‘90s and the age of AI. AI technology, therefore, presents a challenge to the original purpose of the DMCA.
Before AI started taking the world by storm, the internet was a place where copyright owners could store their original work in its entirety, making it easy to remove in cases of infringement.
However, generative AI technology like ChatGPT trains on and analyzes the patterns of multiple creative works to produce content, making it difficult to separate infringing material.
So, if generative AI tech contains copyright-violating work, it’s not a matter of simply removing a piece of content. Developers would need to retrain the AI from scratch — without the copyrighted work, making for an immense job.
This could complicate the DMCA takedown notice procedure for removing infringing content, especially if multiple copyright holders submit these notices over time. AI companies could argue that using this material to train their program falls under fair use, but this has yet to be established by the courts.
With lawsuits currently pending against major generative AI companies, it is yet to be seen how the results will affect the DMCA and other copyright laws in the future.
While the Digital Millennium Copyright Act has been serving its purpose of protecting the online rights of copyright holders since the 1990s, it may need some updating in the age of AI. Until everything is sorted out, it’s a good idea to prevent any potential AI-related DMCA violations.
One of the easiest ways to do this is with an AI detector. If you find AI-generated text in your content, whether it’s a blog post or a writing contract, you can edit and rephrase it to avoid possible copyright infringement.
In the meantime, keep an eye on the US Copyright Office’s position on copyright and AI to stay informed about updates to the DMCA.