§ 3.01 Introduction

• Jurisdiction: United States
• Publication year: 2020

§ 3.01 Introduction

This chapter contains a discussion of federal criminal statutes apart from criminal copyright that are intended to increase the scope of protection for creative works. The term "creative works" is used here instead of copyrighted works because, although it was Congress's primary intent that the statutes described herein would increase the scope of protection accorded to copyrighted works, the statutes do not uniformly require that the government prove the existence of a copyrighted work.

The chapter first describes the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA").¹ The statute, in general, prohibits the circumvention of technological measures² used by copyright owners to protect their works and the tampering of copyright management information.³ In addition to the statute's civil sections, violations may be prosecuted criminally as a felony with a maximum penalty of five years in prison if those violations are committed "willfully" and "for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain"⁴

The remainder of the chapter is devoted to three other federal criminal statutes that are also intended to increase the scope of protection for creative works. In particular, the chapter includes a description of statutes that prohibit the trafficking in counterfeit or illicit labels,⁵ trafficking in recordings of live musical performances,⁶ and unauthorized recording of motion pictures in a motion picture exhibition facility ("camcording").⁷

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Notes:

^[1] Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Pub. L. No. 105-304, 112 Stat. 2860 (1998). In addition to 17 U.S.C. §§ 1201-1205 that provide for criminal penalties, Title II of the DMCA provides for limitations on the liability of Internet service providers for making available or transmitting copyrighted material. See 17 U.S.C. § 512. Service providers, however, are expected to remove material, which appears to constitute copyright infringement, from the user's Web sites in response to proper notice from the copyright owners. Id. Since Title II of the DMCA does not provide for criminal sanctions it will not be addressed here.

^[2] See 17 U.S.C. § 1201.

^[3] See 17 U.S.C. § 1202.

^[4] See 17 U.S.C. § 1204(a).

^[5] See 18 U.S.C. § 2318.

^[6] See 18...