Copyright Information

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a 1998 copyright law in the United States which implements the provisions of two WIPO - World Intellectual Property Organization - treaties from 1996. While the first part comprises of the two WIPO treaties, the Copyright and Performances and Phonogram Treaties Implementation Act and the anti circumvention copy protection or better known as the Macrovision circumvention prohibition. Other parts of the Act include the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act, the Computer Maintenance Competition Assurance Act, the Vessel Hull Design Protection Act and some miscellaneous provisions. The WIPO Copyright and Performances and Phonogram Treaties Implementation Act is actually the law dedicated to govern circumvention of copyright protection. Some of the main copy protection systems, the Macrovision system, and the CSS, or Content Scrambling System, were both being circumvented by several commercial and non commercial programs, such as DeCSS, AnyDVD, DVD Genie, or even the free virtual CD and virtual DVD software Daemon Tools. Interestingly enough, none of the lawsuits against the listed companies or software products were successful. The main problem is that the intention is punishable, if somebody intentionally provides the software to circumvent protection with the goal to aid and abet piracy,