DMCA
More info
- Released
- 1998
- Type
- US federal law
The 1998 US law that made breaking copy protection illegal, even where the copying itself would have been perfectly lawful.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act implemented the 1996 WIPO copyright treaties, and two of its sections shaped the web. Section 1201 bans circumventing technical protection measures and distributing tools that do so. Section 512 gives platforms a safe harbor: they aren't liable for users' infringement as long as they take material down when a rights holder complains — hence the DMCA takedown.
Section 1201 has been swung widely: at Dmitry Sklyarov, arrested after a 2001 talk on Adobe's e-book protection, and by Lexmark against a maker of toner cartridge chips. In 2020 the RIAA got youtube-dl pulled from GitHub, which restored it a few weeks later. Every three years the Library of Congress grants exemptions, such as unlocking phones.