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You can read a more detailed review of this here
http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf
but basically this a nifty law that gives almost anyone the power to disable a website, forum or blog for printing any material that is copyrighted.
Copyright is basically a writer's rights to his own materials. Material does not need to be published anywhere, or recorded with the Library of Congress, in order to be copyrighted - a simple notice such as
Copyright 2009 Modee, All Rights Reserved, Protected as an Unpublished Work
will suffice to both protect the material and put the reader on notice as to the copyright.
Even without that notice, if a writer writes something, it is presumed to be copyrighted with rights reserved in the absence of some contractual agreement that states otherwise.
What the DMCA does is allow the owner or legal representative of an owner of copyrighted materials to make a claim against a website (its owner, its hosting company, even against the search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. that feed the site), for use of copyrighted materials.
Once a website, or its host, is put on notice of a DMCA action, it must disable or remove the materials for at least a period of time, pending a court battle over the issue. In most cases, a web owner will capitulate and remove the materials rather than face a lengthy and expensive battle.
There are subtleties to how to do this properly - and time the attack so that the website is choked off in various ways - at worst, ten days at a time
- so that even if there is no court battle the site can be effectively crippled until the site webmaster sees the light and removes the copyrighted material.
http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf
but basically this a nifty law that gives almost anyone the power to disable a website, forum or blog for printing any material that is copyrighted.
Copyright is basically a writer's rights to his own materials. Material does not need to be published anywhere, or recorded with the Library of Congress, in order to be copyrighted - a simple notice such as
Copyright 2009 Modee, All Rights Reserved, Protected as an Unpublished Work
will suffice to both protect the material and put the reader on notice as to the copyright.
Even without that notice, if a writer writes something, it is presumed to be copyrighted with rights reserved in the absence of some contractual agreement that states otherwise.
What the DMCA does is allow the owner or legal representative of an owner of copyrighted materials to make a claim against a website (its owner, its hosting company, even against the search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. that feed the site), for use of copyrighted materials.
Once a website, or its host, is put on notice of a DMCA action, it must disable or remove the materials for at least a period of time, pending a court battle over the issue. In most cases, a web owner will capitulate and remove the materials rather than face a lengthy and expensive battle.
There are subtleties to how to do this properly - and time the attack so that the website is choked off in various ways - at worst, ten days at a time
- so that even if there is no court battle the site can be effectively crippled until the site webmaster sees the light and removes the copyrighted material.