The DMCA isn't working - at least for Cary Sherman and the RIAA. After 10 years since the rise of Napster and mainstream P2P, the hysteria that once accompanied file-sharing has since died down, but the legacy it created lives on. The DMCA was signed into law just one year before the launch of Napster, and its origins are itself composed of years worth of negotiations that preceded it. In essence, the DMCA was created during a time when existing technology might as well been carved from rock - a period known as the early 90s.

There was no Napster, P2P, MP3 files, or iPhones back then. Computers and monitors were bulking heaps, running the pinnacle of OS technology, Windows 3.1. No one ever envisioned the massive BitTorrent networks that would dominate the Internet or the level of music or movie trading that accompanies it. The question is…does an old document designed for a different technological era still apply today?

We've managed to keep the Constitution as the basis of US law for 234 years, so the DMCA's comparatively diminutive age shouldn't be an issue. But is it?

According to the RIAA, yes. Although the DMCA is often criticized and damned to hell by file-sharers, it has also granted several provisions that make life easier for the online world. Chiefly, it grants safe harbor to ISPs, granting them impunity for any illegal transmission that may traverse their networks. That includes such illegal transmissions like a P2P upload of a copyrighted work - something the RIAA doesn't like.

From CNet: "The DMCA isn't working for content people at all," he [Cary Sherman] said at the Technology Policy Institute's Aspen Forum... "You cannot monitor all the infringements on the Internet. It's simply not possible. We don't have the ability to search all the places infringing content appears, such as cyberlockers like [file-hosting firm] RapidShare."

As crappy as the DMCA might be, such as "preventing" research into breaking DRM (Digital Rights Management), it’s managed to throw a few gems as well. Of course there are the safe harbor provisions, something ISPs will have to be bonkers to give up, and the recent iPhone jailbreaking exemption granted by the US Copyright Office.

Cary made no mention of that particularity, but we can't help but think that Apple’s sentiment is nearly identical to the RIAA’s

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Date: 2010-08-24 Source: http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=2029