Legal basis for the use of technical means of copyright protection in the USA

Introduction. The legal regulation of the copyright protection through technical means in the United States of America (hereinafter referred to as the USA) is by far the most developed. This is due to the fact that law enforcement in this area in the USA has been formed for over more than one century and over this time, a lot of experience has been accumulated. At the same time the USA, through the adoption of the Digital Millennium Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, were the first to implement in its legislation the WIPO Internet treaties that established the legal regulation of the use of technical protection at the international level. In this regard legal approaches to regulating the use of technical means of copyright protection are of particular interest both from the scientific point of view and from the point of view of law enforcement. The article is devoted to the study of the legal basis for the use of technical means of copyright protection in the USA.

Materials and methods. The methodological ground of the research include the following general scientific and special methods of cognition of legal phenomena and processes: dialectical, formal-legal, comparative-legal, formal-logical, structural-functional.

Results. The authors found that US law regulates not only the ban on circumvention of technical means of copyright protection, but also establishes exemptions from this ban, which is called «the doctrine of free use of works”, which details the cases when a person has the right on legal grounds to get access to a certain work. The US legislation also defines the criteria according to which the technical means of copyright protection is recognized as such. Two conditions must be met in this regard: effective control over access to the protected work and effective protection of copyright. Analysis of the US current legislation allows us to come to a conclusion about sufficiently effective measures of civil-law protection and the development of the institution of civil liability, which is for offenses related to circumvention of technical means of protection.

Discussion and Conclusions. The «doctrine of free use of works” has been esplored, and cases of its application have been determined. The approaches of the legislator in the USA to the definition of technical means of copyright protection are analyzed. The mechanism and conditions for applying civil liability in the case of establishing the circumvention of technical means of copyright protection are investigated.

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