The proliferation of social media sites, from Facebook to WhatsApp to YouTube, has been in tandem with social media use since the 1990s. As a result, nearly everyone and anyone has become a publisher. Modern-day publishers. have responsibilities regarding the respect and use of intellectual property that were spelled out by the US Digital Millennium ACT (DCMA.) These responsibilities include proper attribution of the intellectual property of copyrighted material.
Respect And Use of Intellectual Property: DMCA and other copyright protection regimes spell out the rights of creators
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a United States copyright law, passed in 1998, by the United States Senate and signed into law by President Bill Clinton that same year, which amended Title 17 of the United States Code, that implements 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO.) Each territorial jurisdiction has its version based on WIPO. So, copyright is the exclusive right granted to creators of original works/intellectual property, for a limited time, to use, and distribute their creations to facilitate their compensation. In the US, amongst other stipulations, DMCA heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet.
Coypyright Symbol
Examples of works protected under the WIPO/DCMA “Copyright” includes: “any original production in the literary, scientific and artistic domain, whatever may be the mode or form of its expression.” “Works based on other works, such as translations, adaptations, arrangements of music and other alterations of a literary or artistic work, are also protected.” …” Further, “works must be fixed in some material form in order to be protected.”
Copyright holders have tools to manage their intellectual property. For works usable on social media, watermarks on images, metadata indicators in the media, e.g., in images or video, and online text content plagiarism checkers are common rights management tools. Other tools generally available to the copyright holders include product keys, activation limits, persistent online Digital Rights Management (DRM,) encryption, copy restriction, runtime restrictions, regional lockout, and requirement of specific hardware use.
Article resumes next week with tools available to Copyright holders and exemptions to Copyright strictures and
–Richard Thomas
Next: Part II/IV
