World Wide Whac-a-Mole: The Inadequacies of the DMCA to Protect Copyright Holders Online and Why Artificial Intelligence is the Solution

Authors

Nathania Davis-Fox, Texas A&M University School of LawFollow

Document Type

Student Article

Abstract

Congress created the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) at the dawn of the internet age 25 years ago. It addressed the needs and concerns of Online Service Providers (OSPs) in the nascent cyber landscape, but the DMCA must now be reformed to meet the needs of Web 2.0. The DMCA’s refusal to condition §512(c) safe harbor protection on OSPs’ platform monitoring is no longer practical. This now produces results contrary to the Copyright Act’s purpose of encouraging the creation and dissemination of new works. Copyright owners are fighting a losing battle against infringing OSP users and the DMCA’s notice-and-takedown procedures are little help against the sea of infringing material on Web 2.0. Thus, §512(c) safe harbors must be reformed to condition protection on OSPs taking affirmative anti-infringement action. Artificial intelligence (AI), a powerful and ever-improving tool, equips OSPs to monitor user-generated content for infringing material and puts OSPs in a better position than any other entity to combat the online copyright infringement epidemic. This Comment argues that all Web 2.0 OSPs—especially social media platforms—should begin using AI screening tools to monitor their sites—a process that would greatly shrink §512(c) safe harbor protection and greatly reduce copyright infringement to the mutual benefit of copyright owners and OSPs.

DOI

10.37419/JPL.V11.I2.5

First Page

355

Last Page

382

Recommended Citation

Nathania Davis-Fox, World Wide Whac-a-Mole: The Inadequacies of the DMCA to Protect Copyright Holders Online and Why Artificial Intelligence is the Solution, 11 Tex. A&M J. Prop. L. 355 (2025).
Available at: https://doi.org/10.37419/JPL.V11.I2.5