Copyright is one of the most significant non tangible assets of an organization. Organizations consider copyrighting their entities as an essential legal obligation. This act infers that the organization values the social and ethical rules followed globally. Copyrights protection gives exclusive rights to an organization over its original works. An intellectual property of an organization, copyright gives the power to an organization to handle crucial decisions like accreditation, duplication rights and financial benefits.
The law, of nature suggests that every positive action faces a negative force which opposes its action. Therefore, even Copyrights cannot escape the crimes violating their legal shell. From the time, the concept of copyrighting emerged; copyright infringement came as a counter act, polluting its lawful structure. Criminals started crossing the legal limits by using plagiarism, duplication and many other methods as tools of copyright infringement. In such chaos, the global community realized that they should take necessary actions to prevent the copyright fields from illegal action. This was when acts against copyright infringement came into the frontiers. These documents present rules and regulations that one should follow to stand his copyright legality. These acts are bible for internet attorneys and saviors for all the victims of copyright infringement. People over the internet acknowledge it as Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a copyright law that applies the two treaties of World Intellectual Property Organization. Brought into effect in 1998, it has compiled five titles along with several other measures against copyright infringement and other illegal actions about intellectual properties. It announces all the acts as illegal which also includes controls access over copyrighted works. This act clarifies several legal ambiguities about copyrights and raises penalties for the criminals convicted of the violation. Being a truly comprehensive and cardinal document, this act gives every detail of copyright delicacy, the protection it needs. It outlaws the activities like generation, distribution and duplication of copyrighted entities. It also outlaws illegal access to any controls over copyright protected material. One of the ice breaking innovations of this act is that it gives exemption from direct and indirect internet service providers. Hence, it provides a secure shelter to all those organization, for whom, copyright infringement can become a serious catastrophe.
Each of the five titles talks about copyright legality. Title I refers to copy prevention laws and technical prevention measures. Title II informs about creation of a safe harbor for Online Service Providers, and urges them to remove any infringed material immediately after its identification. Title II gives an outlook over the obligations on the repairing computers where as Title IV entails a list of miscellaneous provisions. Title V generates copyright protection for boat hull designs. In addition to these titles, it incorporates several anti circumvention exemptions.
In today’s contemporary world, infringement is a malpractice which is becoming a common instance. This act provides with a holistic guideline against copyright crime and acts as a shield to all those entities that are under the threat of copyright infringement. Hence, DMCA is a revolutionary and significant copyright act.