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 South Dakota, as in all states, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 applies as federal law. The DMCA provides a framework for balancing the rights of copyright owners with the needs of online service providers. It offers safe harbor protections to online service providers when their users commit copyright infringement, provided 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 making it illegal to circumvent digital rights management (DRM) technologies and by criminalizing the provision of false copyright management information or the alteration of such information. These provisions are designed to encourage the distribution of works in digital formats while protecting against unauthorized access and ensuring accurate copyright information. As federal law, the DMCA preempts state law and is uniformly applied across the United States, including South Dakota.