Oct. 28, 1998: President Signs New Copyright Law

1998: President Bill Clinton signs the Digital Millennium Copyright Act into law. It will take awhile before its impact becomes apparent.

The new law was crafted to offer copyright protection to authors, composers, filmmakers and other content creators in the new and quickly evolving digital world, both online and off. The problem, as they saw it, was that it was just too easy to make exact replicas of their works.

The Clinton administration's Information Infrastructure Task Force released a "White Paper on Intellectual Property and the National Information Infrastructure" in 1995, recommending the enactment of "anti-circumvention" rights to make it illegal to try to undo the encryption of copyright works. Legislation based on the white paper, the National Information Infrastructure Copyright Protection Act, got nowhere in Congress for two years. One reason: Libraries, educational institutions and internet service providers argued that existing protections already endangered the public's right to access information.

Eventually, content creators prevailed on Congress to fulfill U.S. obligations under the World Intellectual Property Organization treaties of 1996.

One of the most controversial elements of the new law was its anti-circumvention provision. That made it a criminal offense to disable, tamper with or otherwise hack software designed to prevent unauthorized copying.

Violators could be fined $2,500. The American Library Association warned that the provision might lead to a "pay-per-use intellectual universe," keeping people from even copying stuff legally for their own private use.

In response to criticisms, the bill's supporters added a provision specifically reasserting the "fair use" of copyright material. Congress also removed a section that would have allowed the data contained in databases to be placed under copyright protection.

Another detail proved to have major impact: communications providers like telephone companies and internet service providers would not be responsible for inadvertently transmitting copyright works posted by users who did not actually have the right to transmit them.

The Republican-controlled Senate passed the legislation by unanimous consent Oct. 8, the same day the House (also GOP-controlled) voted 258-176 to begin impeachment proceedings against President Clinton. Leaders in the House were also angry at the high-tech lobby for selecting a former Democratic congressman as president of its trade association, the Electronic Industries Alliance. So the House took the copyright bill off its calendar for a few days, but eventually passed the measure by a voice vote Oct. 12.

Congress presented the bill to President Clinton Oct. 20, and he signed it eight days later as Public Law 105-304. He probably had quite a few things on his mind at the time.

Source: Various