Recent "Digital Copyright" Legislation: U.S. DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) The debates in the House and Senate preceding the signing into law of the DMCA by U.S. President Clinton in October 1998 indicated that the principal object of the Act is to promote the U.S. economy by establishing an efficient Internet marketplace in copyrighted works. The DMCA implements the two 1996 WIPO treaties (WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty and WIPO Copyright Treaty) and addresses a variety of issues that arose with the increased availability of content in digital form. The Act 1) creates a series of "safe harbor" defenses (which are subject to a variety of conditions that must be met) for certain common activities of ISPs (Internet Service Provider), 2) bars the circumvention of technological protection measures that protect copyrighted works, 3) prohibits the distribution or provision of false copyright management information with the intent to induce or conceal infringement, 4) establishes an exemption for making a copy of a computer program for purposes of maintenance or repair, and 5) contains provisions concerning the "webcasting" of sound recordings on the Internet and the making of (digital) copies of copyrighted works by nonprofit libraries and archives. A full-text version of the DMCA is available from: The Library of Congress: Thomas (Legislative Information on the Internet): http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/z?cp105:hr796: Moreover the U.S. Copyright Office provides a memorandum, which briefly summarizes each of the five titles of the DMCA (pdf format): http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/legislation/dmca.pdf The DMCA has been criticized for not clarifying the range of legal principles on the liability of ISPs and creating exceptions to only some of the provisions; therefore giving copyright owners even more rights. Among the variety of comments on the DMCA are: Lutzker, Arnold P.: Primer on the Digital Millennium: What the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Copyright Term Extension Act Mean for the Library Community. http://www.arl.org/info/frn/copy/primer.html Lutzker & Lutzker law firm and the Association of Research Libraries: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act: Highlights of New Copyright Provision Establishing Limitation of Liability for Online Service Providers. http://www.arl.org/info/frn/copy/osp.html

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Proxy Servers A proxy server is a server that acts as an intermediary between a workstation user and the Internet so that security, administrative control, and caching service can be ensured. A proxy server receives a request for an Internet service (such as a Web page request) from a user. If it passes filtering requirements, the proxy server, assuming it is also a cache server, looks in its local cache of previously downloaded Web pages. If it finds the page, it returns it to the user without needing to forward the request to the Internet. If the page is not in the cache, the proxy server, acting as a client on behalf of the user, uses one of its own IP addresses to request the page from the server out on the Internet. When the page is returned, the proxy server relates it to the original request and forwards it on to the user. Source: Whatis.com

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