What is the scope of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)?
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a federal law enacted in 1998 that governs the use of copyrighted works in the digital age. It amended copyright law in the United States to extend exclusive rights to owners of copyrighted works. In addition, it criminalized the production and dissemination of technology that is used to circumvent measures that protect copyrighted works. The scope of the DMCA applies to all digital works, including software, music, and movies. It also applies to the Internet, providing legal protections to service providers from liability for copyright infringement by their users. It requires service providers to remove or block access to infringing material if notified by the copyright owner. Moreover, the DMCA also criminalizes the circumvention of copy-protection technology. It prohibits the distribution of tools to bypass this technology, and it makes it a criminal act to circumvent access control technology, such as encryption. In Hawaii, the scope of the DMCA is also enforced on the state level. The Hawaii legislature passed a law in 2015 known as the Hawaii Unfair Competition Law, which prohibits any form of unfair competition in the state. This law is based on the same principle as the DMCA and applies to the digital age. As such, it specifically prohibits the distribution of software used to circumvent copy-protection technology, and any activities that are considered to be unfair or deceptive.
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