In 1998, Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which amended U.S. copyright law (The Copyright Act of 1976) to address important parts of the relationship between copyright and the internet. The three main updates to copyright law were:

• establishing protections for online service providers in certain situations if their users engage in copyright infringement, including by creating the notice-and-takedown system, which allows copyright owners to inform online service providers about infringing material so it can be taken down;

• encouraging copyright owners to give greater access to their works in digital formats by providing them with legal protections against unauthorized access to their works (for example, hacking passwords or circumventing encryption); and

• making it unlawful to provide false copyright management information (for example, names of authors and copyright owners, titles of works) or to remove or alter that type of information in certain circumstances.

The DMCA is in the United States Code (federal statutes) at 17 U.S.C. §§512, 1201-1205, 1301-1332; and 28 U.S.C. §4001.

In Nevada, as in all states, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 is a federal statute that applies uniformly across the country. The DMCA provides a legal framework for copyright protection in the digital environment. It offers safe harbor provisions to online service providers, shielding them from liability for copyright infringement by their users under certain conditions, as long as they comply with the notice-and-takedown procedure. This procedure allows copyright owners to notify service providers of infringing content so it can be removed. Additionally, the DMCA protects copyright owners by criminalizing the act of circumventing technological measures that control access to copyrighted works (anti-circumvention) and by prohibiting the provision or alteration of false copyright management information. These updates to copyright law are designed to balance the interests of copyright owners with the need to foster the growth of the internet and digital media. As federal law, the DMCA preempts state law in cases of conflict and is codified in Title 17 and Title 28 of the United States Code.