Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and Grex

Nov 19 18:29 UTC 1998

Here's a link to an analysis of the new Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
 
   http://arl.cni.org/info/frn/copy/band.html

Skip down to Title II, "Online Service Provider Liability."
My reading of this -- of course I am not a lawyer -- is that the "safe 
harbor" provisions of the law would protect Grex from liability for the 
copyright infringements of its users 

                                      BUT

in order to claim the Safe Harbor, Grex needs to do certain things, 
including: registering an official copyright contact person with the 
Copyright Office, and complying with the Notice and Take Down provisions
of the law if a complaint is received.

I know someone is going to say:  Grex is not an ISP.  :)
Footnote 34 explains that the definition of an Online Service Provider
includes ""services such as providing Internet access, e-mail, chat room
and web page hosting.""  

For discussion.  If anyone wants to discuss the provisions of this law 
which have less effect on Grex, such as the prohibition of cracking 
encryption and copy protection schemes, or the section protecting 
boat hull designs  :), let's start an item in Agora.

response 2 of 8:

Nov 19 23:53 UTC 1998

   Actually, I think the contact entity should be baff or baff/
web people, because unlike virtually any other piece of mail we're
ever likley to get, this kind of mail is truly important and we
need as many people to see it as possible so as to avoid dropping
the ball.

   I agree with Ken, under the definition of the law we need to
contact the proper people for contract registration, and hopefully
that will be the end of it as far as we're concerned.

response 4 of 8:

Nov 20 14:36 UTC 1998

"board and staff".

response 6 of 8:

Nov 28 06:51 UTC 1998

I agree that webmasters and cfadms are the appropriate contact people.

response 8 of 8:

Apr 13 21:11 UTC 1999

Idle curiosity - how does copyright law prevent the cracking of encryption?
Not that this is likely to big a big concern, I realise...
As far as hull designs go, people just better stay out of hc/hulls/beta...