The Digital Media Copyright Act, known in other words as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or simply the DMCA, is a Federal copyright law which is founded to have a check over Internet piracy of digital media and the Bill was passed in US senate on October 12, 1998.

Since the signing of DMCA, it has been used in many a numbers of notable court cases and is been criticized by the society for many a reasons. Under the preview of this law it is illegal to download copyrighted digital media like music, movies and software. However, as with respect to features and objectives of DMCA act it is comprised of five titles and two treaties singed at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Geneva conference in 1996.

Under its five titles DMCA restrict the ability to make, sell or distribute devices which have copyright protection. Thus it disapproves of cracking commercial software, sell or distribute any software used for cracking commercial software or making unauthorized copies of copyrighted DVDs and CDs.

The area and cases where DMCA is most widely used for restriction is copyrighted material in respect to is illegal to host, share or download copyrighted works involving music, movies, books, software, etc. there are many websites which have come under preview over years for violation of the DMCA and most noted website on this respect are Napster, Kazaa and Limewire. Sites like The Pirate Bay, ISOHunt and Mininova have lost cases under DMCA as they provide links to infringing material and making file sharing very easy on peer- to- peer (P2P) users.

Another interesting aspect with DMCA is creation of safe harbor for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) against copyright liability as to ensure regulation of guidelines for blocking access or removing allegedly infringing stuff after getting notification from the copyright holder. However, DMCA many a times is not respected for making far easy for copyright owners to take down infringing content and links as often times it is seen that infringe content and links at first place is not infringing.

Hence, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act creates groundwork for all Internet-related copyright law and is for the intellectual rights protection of publishers.