Intro to DMCA

What is the DMCA

  DMCA stands for Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA is a copyright law for the United States. This is meant to protect the rights of owners of their copyrighted materials if they have been infringed upon. Infringing means to use someone else’s work without proper licenses or permissions. It is possible to get the proper licensing to use someone else’s content or music. It often requires purchasing the licensing or some sort of agreement being made. Obtaining the licensing needs to be taken up though with the true owner of the content. Never assume you have the licensing to content that is not yours. This also does not guarantee you will get it, the person is entitled to say no. In order to safely use music or other copyrighted works, you must get permission from the true owner. A music artist replying to your tweet saying yes does not legally grant you the right to use their music, sometimes they aren’t the complete owner of their music and their say means nothing. Always seek out legal paperwork to protect your right. You may have received a DMCA takedown notification or copyright strike as a Twitch streamer or YouTuber. These takedown notifications basically mean you used content protected under DMCA laws that you do not have ownership to and you need to remove it. You can receive it for a few things on Twitch like using someone else’s emotes, YouTube video, or music. These notifications can cause copyright strikes on your channel and ultimately lead to your account being banned, so it is best to avoid receiving these claims.  A copyright strike is a system platforms like Twitch and YouTube use to keep track of how many times you may have been in violation of the DMCA. You acquire strikes...