Online Piracy Finally In the Crosshairs
On March 13, the Congressional Subcommittee on copyright reform held hearings on proposed revisions to the DMCA, Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Those invited to testify were evenly split between those who represented the tech industry and those who represented the artist and Copyright. Maria Schneider, a Grammy Award Winner, was the lone artist represented on the panel. She presented honest, impassioned testimony framing the serious challenges of out-of-control piracy from an artist's perspective.
Written in 1998, with the intent of protecting both copyright holders and website owners, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, quickly became a devastating problem for copyright holders. Not coincidentally, barely a year later, in 1999, Shawn Fanning launched Napster, marking the beginning of online piracy and over a decade of artist abuse.
Now, fifteen years later, most pirate sites are still operating under the protection provided by the DMCA's Safe Harbor; a loop-hole that has enabled pirate sites to thrive in a quasi-legal gray area. A safe harbor from which online pirates claim compliance by engaging in what is commonly referred to as whack-a-mole, a process where infringing sites comply with take down notices by taking down the infringing content only to have the same content reposted almost immediately from another source.
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