§ 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...