How the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Affects Cybersecurity
Katherine Weigle · bepress Legal Repository · 2018
Black hat hackers have been unlawfully accessing and controlling everything from vehicle software to medical implants; these dangerous and manipulative hacks can control and influence life-threatening software.In response to the threat, cybersecurity researchers are often unable to provide immediate, viable, and all-encompassing solutions to these security issues due to the danger of copyright infringement under the anti-circumvention exemptions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).If Section 1201 of the DMCA continues to maintain an exemption for circumvention, security researchers will be able to circumvent technology and software to find safety glitches and reasonable alternatives-and thus foreshadowing or preventing hackers from unlawfully controlling these technologies.Over the years, many researchers and security analysts have advocated that the U.S. Copyright Office should maintain a permanent exemption in the DMCA through the creation of new rules tailored explicitly to security research.Like other proposals, this article will address the problems being faced in the cybersecurity industry, but alternatively, will provide potential reform solutions as to how security researchers may circumvent technology without the fear of prosecution.This article will offer alternatives and discuss proposed amendments to the DMCA, and address the issue as to which governing authority should oversee the DMCA, as well as provide an analysis of the continuously changing anti-circumvention exemption.Through research and a comparison of past, present, and potential law, this article will weigh the pros and cons of amending the Section 1201 exemption for researchers, and discuss whether the U.S.