Culture Wars: Openness vs. Enclosure

The Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DCMA), effective since 1998, is a copyright law that criminalizes technologies that "circumvent measures that control the access to copyrighted works". Copyright penalties are also more severe under the DCMA. The DCMA is a form of enclosure that Benkler talks about. Laws like the DCMA are meant to enclose and control the distribution of material via the Internet. Under such laws, it is difficult to share content without being under the possibility of breaking the law.

Acts like the DCMA do contribute to the suppression of creativity and innovation. What it prevents are tools that help to circulate material easily and increase accessibility of these materials between users. Of course, the materials being shared are often under copyright.

Yet the main concern for us is, what if we were to use the materials to create new things? Accessing copyrighted material via unlawful ways may be an act against the law yet if our creativity is suppressed then that violates our freedom of rights. It is an interesting conflict between protecting what is created and promoting innovation. If we draw on other sources for inspiration or if we look at precedents in order to develop new ideas, then laws like the DCMA act as walls that come between the old and the new. The new cannot exist without the old and vice versa.