1978: NOAA announces gender-neutral hurricane naming system
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May 12, 20206:00 am
< a min read
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on this day in 1998. The DMCA bill was heavily supported by the content industries — Hollywood, the music business and book publishers — during its legislative journey through Congress. It was written in order to strengthen existing federal copyright protections against new threats posed by the internet and by the democratization of high technology. But included in the legislation as it was eventually enacted was a “safe harbor” provision granting companies operating platforms for user-contributed content protection from liability for acts of copyright infringement by those users. It was this provision that the operators of file-sharing platforms like Grokster and Napster tried to hide behind during their unsuccessful attempts to defend themselves against DMCA-inspired litigation in the early 2000s. The DMCA explicitly authorized copyright holders to issue “takedown” notices to individuals or companies believed to be engaging in infringing use of a copyrighted work.