United StatesDigital Millennium Copyright Act, anti-circumvention provisions
In force since .
A computer misuse rule binding public and private bodies.
- Audit expectation
- none
What it requires
- Do not circumvent a technological measure that controls access to a copyrighted work in order to collect it.
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text. Also read by: MDY Industries, LLC v. Blizzard Entertainment, Inc., No. 09-15932 (9th Cir. , amended ) (recorded ).
In the frameworks
- NIST AI RMF
- MAP 4.1Approaches for mapping AI technology and legal risks of its components – including the use of third-party data or software – are in place, followed, and documented, as are risks of infringement of a third party’s intellectual property or other rights.
Our reading of where this law's duties sit in each framework. It never says that running a control meets the law. How we read a framework against the law
Who enforces it
Settledness
The D.C. Circuit's opinion in Green v. Department of Justice records that the plaintiffs had abandoned their as-applied challenges to section 1201(a) and affirms the district court's judgment, so no as-applied First Amendment claim against section 1201 is pending in that case.
- As of
- Case link
- https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2011/02/17/09-15932.pdf
- Case citation
- MDY Industries, LLC v. Blizzard Entertainment, Inc., No. 09-15932 (9th Cir. , amended )
- Open questions
- Must a plaintiff under 17 U.S.C. section 1201(a)(2) show that the circumvention bears a relationship to infringement, as the Federal Circuit held in Chamberlain Group v. Skylink, or does section 1201(a) create a right separate from infringement, as the Ninth Circuit held in MDY Industries v. Blizzard Entertainment?
What it makes you log
Logging duty
Section 1201(a)(1)(A) prohibits circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a copyrighted work, and the rest of the section sets exemptions and the rulemaking that adds more. None of it requires a log or record. The exemption for a nonprofit library in section 1201(d)(1) limits how long a copy of the work may be kept, which limits the copy and not a record, and the encryption-research exemption in section 1201(g)(3) counts notice of findings to the copyright owner as a factor and not as a duty. The section names no territorial hook.
- Kind
- None
- As of
What this law does
Section 1201 prohibits circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a copyrighted work. It functions as an escalation point rather than a scraping-specific rule: it is invoked once a target has put up a technical access barrier and a collector defeats it, the same fact pattern that also triggers Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and state computer-misuse exposure once notice and continued access or circumvention are shown, as in Facebook v. Power Ventures.
Section 1201 was added by title I of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Pub. L. 105-304, approved ; the anti-circumvention prohibition in subsection (a)(1)(A) itself carried a built-in two-year delayed effective date, so it did not bind conduct until , the same window in which the Librarian of Congress ran the first rulemaking under subsection (a)(1)(C) to identify exempt classes of works.
How courts have read itPremium data
Our analysis of this law draws on 11 court rulings.
What each ruling held, what it means for an app, and whether it still stands are premium data, in the Plus, Pro and Enterprise plans.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app crawls the web.
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