The Digital Millennium - Copyright Laws

for the full version of the Digital Millennium Copyright Law, click here

For information on plagerism, click here

On October 12, 1998, the U.S. Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, ending many months of turbulent negotiations regarding its provisions. Two weeks later, on October 28th, President Clinton signed the Act into law.

The Act is designed to implement the treaties signed in December 1996 at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Geneva conference, but also contains additional provisions addressing related matters. 

As was the case with the 'No Electronic Theft' Act (1997), the bill was originally supported by the software and entertainment industries, and opposed by scientists, librarians, and academics. At the last minute, certain controversial provisions were deleted, including a provision that would have provided copyright protection for databases even when the material in the databases was in the public domain. (Senator Hatch has indicated he will seek to bring up the database provisions as separate legislation next year.)

Many who opposed this bill were concerned about an erosion of the fair use doctrine. To address these concerns, Congress included specific language that may ultimately provide certain exemptions for fair use (particularly for nonprofit archives, libraries, and educational institutions).

Highlights Generally:
Makes it a crime to circumvent anti-piracy measures built into most commercial software. Outlaws the manufacture, sale, or distribution of code-cracking devices used to illegally copy software.

Does permit the cracking of copyright protection devices, however, to conduct encryption research, assess product interoperability, and test computer security systems. Provides exemptions from anti-circumvention provisions for nonprofit libraries, archives, and educational institutions under certain
circumstances. In general, limits Internet service providers from copyright infringement liability for simply transmitting information over the Internet. Service providers, however, are expected to remove material from users' web sites that appears to constitute copyright infringement. Limits liability of nonprofit institutions of higher education -- when they serve as online service providers and under certain circumstances --for copyright infringement by faculty members or graduate students. Requires that "webcasters" pay licensing fees to record companies. Requires that the Register of Copyrights, after consultation with relevant parties, submit to Congress recommendations regarding how to promote distance education through digital technologies while "maintaining an appropriate balance between the rights of copyright owners and the needs of users."

States explicitly that "[n]othing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use..."

Plagerism

To put your name on a piece of work is to say that it is yours, that the praise or criticism due to it is due to you. To put your name on a piece of work any part of which is not yours is plagiarism, unless that piece is clearly marked and the work from which you have borrowed is fully identified. Plagiarism is a form of theft. Taking words, phrasing, sentence structure, or any other element of the expression of another person’s ideas, and using them as if they were yours, is like taking from that person a material possession, something he or she has worked for and earned. Even worse is the appropriation of someone else’s ideas. By "ideas" is meant everything from the definition or interpretation of a single word, to the overall approach or argument. If you paraphrase, you merely translate from his or her language to yours; another person’s ideas in your language are still not your ideas. Paraphrase, therefore, without proper documentation, is theft, perhaps of the worst kind. Here, a person loses not a material possession, but something of what characterized him or her as an individual. Plagiarism is a serious violation of another person’s rights, whether the material stolen is great or small; it is not a matter of degree or intent. You know how much you would have had to say without someone else’s help; and you know how much you have added on your own. Your responsibility, when you put your name on a piece of work, is simply to distinguish between what is yours and what is not, and to credit those who have in any way contributed.