The Digital Millennium Copyright Act - 1608 Words

Failure to Protect and Abuses of the Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Most laws are passed by the congress with intent to either limit the government s power or to benefit the country and it s people. This was the thought behind the ill fated and commonly criticized The DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). Its purpose, similar to its predecessor, the Copyright Act itself, was to protect the copyright owners from the big scary pirates, thus protecting their profits and live-hood. It largely succeeds without attracting a lot of opposition with the exception of Section 1201. The reasoning behind Section 1201 was to stop the pirates ability to circumvent the copy protection measures used by content produces and†¦show more content†¦There are a few exceptions written into the law, but in practice, they do very little to protect consumers and only serve to benefit the copyright holders while simultaneously eliminating competition and fair use. The main a rgument in support of this section, is that it prevents the pirates from copying or obtaining tools to copy the copyrighted works. Instead, it s a different story all together. In close to 20 years in existence, this law clearly failed to stop the pirates as TV shows, movies, music and other content keep showing up online without the copyright holders consent. In other words, if these provisions worked as intended, we would not see any pirated movies online or hear about stolen music download. Despite all of this, Interstellar was the most pirated movie in 2015 according to Variety. This clearly shows that Section 1201 failed miserably at it s intended goal as pirates continue to break the protection without worrying about the Section 1201. Even without this section, they would still be breaking the law and thus be liable for the penalties as the Copyright Law itself which already protects the works. There is also another side of this provision, a side where everyone else is payi ng the price of protecting the copyright holders. Supporters state that the law provides sufficient exemptions for scholars and researches when working on encryption and DRM. However, there are numerous examples of the abuse of Section 1201. One of the