shouting loudly

This week is the 10th Anniversary of the passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Title I of the DMCA is the most controversial and important part of the act.

In a great post over at Freedom to Tinker, David Robinson has a great post on how the DMCA was born. He relies heavily on Jessica Litman’s fantastic book, Digital Copyright, but the post itself is quite worth reading.

Importantly, he talks about the process of policy laundering–negotiating international treaties behind closed doors as a vehicle for passing laws that would be politically unpopular if simply proposed as legislation at the national level.

Unfortunately, this seems to be an important motivating force behind the super-secret, back-room-negotiated Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA.