provides some protection for service providers who have infringing materials on their Web sites, or temporarily store or link to such materials. The DMCA also includes two important prohibitions. One proscribes the circumvention of devices that limit access to digital works, and the other bans interference with copyright management information.
Under the DMCA, a service provider is “an entity offering the transmission, routing, or providing connections for digital online communications, between or among points specified by a user, of material of the user’s choosing, without modification to the content of the materials sent or received.”[1] Most libraries have parent institutions that supply Internet connectivity. Whether you work for an independent library or one with a parent institution, it is important to understand the DMCA and help your institution stay within the DMCA’s safe harbor. The DMCA uses “service provider”, and that is what we use here, but “internet service provider” and “online service provider” are synonyms.
In a nutshell, there are four situations where the DMCA protects service providers: (1) transitory digital communications, (2) caching, (3) materials stored on a network at the direction of a user (including hosting Web sites), and (4) information location tools (linking). Very generally, under certain circumstances a service provider that infringes because its Web site routes, stores, or links to infringing material will be liable neither for monetary damages nor subject to injunctive relief.[2]
Transitory Digital Network Communications (Section 512(a))
Section 512(a) of the DMCA addresses a service provider that “merely acts as a data conduit, transmitting digital information from one point on a network to another at someone else’s request” when the information transmitted happens to be infringing.[3] This protects the service provider for simply routing or providing connections that enable the information to be
- ↑ 17 U.S.C. § 512(k) (2006).
- ↑ 17 U.S.C. § 512(j) (2006) (spells out the limited injunctive relief available to a plaintiff).
- ↑ U.S. Copyright Office, The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, at 10 (Dec. 1998), available at http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf [hereinafter DMCA Summary].
