Information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to contact the complaining party, such as an address, telephone number, and, if available, an electronic mail address at which the complaining party may be contacted.ĥ. Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the material.Ĥ. Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, if multiple copyrighted works at a single online site are covered by a single notification, a representative list of such works at that site.ģ. A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.Ģ. Under the law, this notice must contain the following elements:ġ. To do that, they must provide a complete takedown notice. Under the DMCA, copyright holders and their agents can demand removal of allegedly infringing content. In short, this procedure is largely responsible for many of the sites and services we have today. The legal risks would simply be too high. Though this element of the law has seen its fair share of controversy, without safe harbor, many Web sites, including YouTube and most social networking sites, would almost impossible to operate. Information Location Tools: Similar to Web hosts, information location tools, including search engines and directories, were given safe harbor provided they met a similar set of criteria. Web Hosts: Services that host content were given safe harbor provided they had no knowledge of the infringement, lacked the ability to control it, did not encourage it, did not profit directly from it and work to expeditiously remove infringing material after receiving proper notification.Ĥ. Caching Services: Services that cache data temporarily, such as those used by many broadband providers to speed up access, were also granted complete safe harbor.ģ. Conduits: Services that were not destinations in and of themselves, (IE: Broadband access providers) were granted complete safe harbor for infringements that passed through their networks.Ģ. In the end there were four different kinds of online service providers that were given protection under the law:ġ. This meant that Web hosts could not be held liable for infringement that took place on their service, so long as they completed the necessary elements. Before the DMCA, theoretically, sites such as Geocties, which hosted content for users, could be sued for contributing to copyright infringement simply because they provided the hosting for unlawful content.Īs part of the DMCA, which itself stemmed largely from the World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty, Congress gave Web hosts “safe harbor” from such liability provided they met certain qualifications and obeyed a set of rules. One of the bigger questions what liability Web hosts and other service providers faced when users on their network committed copyright infringement. Though Congress had just rewritten the entire copyright statute some twenty years prior, the rapid growth of the Internet had left a lot of questions about copyright unanswered. ![]() copyright law was beginning to look dated. Given how important this process has become, it is crucial for bloggers, Webmasters, hosts and anyone who posts content online to understand how the procedure works so they can both take advantage of it to protect their own work, if needed, and be prepared to answer any claims that are filed against them. However, the system has also been abused at times and mistakes have been made in other cases. ![]() Countless DMCA notices have been filed to secure the removal of everything from illegal MP3s and movies to plagiarized poems. One of the critical elements of the DMCA was the Safe Harbor provisions, which established a notice-and-takedown system for removing allegedly infringing works from the Web.įor the most part, that system has been used as intended. It has had a greater impact on the Web than virtually any other piece of legislation and is largely responsible for much of the Web we see today. The Digital Millennium Copyright ACT (DMCA) is one of the best-known and most-controversial pieces of legislation passed in recent years.
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