DMCA

What Is the DMCA?

By the middle, the then too late 1990s, peer-to-peer file-sharing and other new digital technologies had facilitated widespread illegal access to copyrighted material.

In response, industry organizations such as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) lobbied for the creation of a formal process by which copyright holders could assert their rights over media posted to third-party websites and have copyrighted material removed promptly.

The DMCA is the result — a collaboration between legislators, media companies, and consumer advocates. The DMCA is short for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It is a US law that was enacted by the US Congress in 1998 and signed by President Bill Clinton on October 28th of that year.

What is DMCA notice? And can it help me?

Since the internet began, people have uploaded over a billion gigabytes of digital content.

That includes music, movies, games, and much more. What protects content creators when someone violates copyright laws and posts their work online without their consent? In the United States, it is the DMCA.

Provisions of the DMCA to protect content creators and owners from copyright violators by providing a process anyone can use to have legally protected work removed from a website.

How Can Notices Be Filed?

The core tool of the DMCA is the DMCA takedown notice. When a copyright holder learns of a violation, a DMCA takedown notice is issued to the service that hosts the offending website or to the internet service provider (ISP) of the violator.

Infringing material can also be removed from search results by issuing a notice to a search engine.

A written notice must be sent to the organization's DMCA agent in writing, identifying the original copyrighted work and the material infringing on a copyright. It must be signed by the copyright holder or their agent.

There is no official DMCA takedown notice form that copyright holders are required to use.

However, each complaint must adhere to certain specifications to be valid. In addition to providing contact information and identifying the suspected copyright infringement, the originator of the notice must state:

That the notice is filed in good faith
That all information in the notice is accurate
That under penalty of perjury, the originator is entitled to act on behalf of someone who owns an exclusive right — that is, copyright — currently being violated.