The DMCA-ish Anticircumvention Provision Around the World

Either through the strong leading role in the establishments of the WCT and WPPT, or through the trade means such as signing bilateral FTA with other countries and threatening with trade sanctions under the Special 301, U.S. has successfully promoted its anticircumvention provision into a worldwide standard. However, even in the U.S.’s domain, the anticircumvention provision has been proven troublesome and produced lots of unexpected side effects. As a result, the hard selling DMCA-ish anticircumvention provision into a world-wide standard would unavoidable causes problems in countries who have forced to accept such rigorous provision.
In this article, the author will first introduce the background of and the debates around the enactment of WIPO two treaties: WTC and WPPT, which are the products generated under the contest between U.S. & EU and the developing & neo-developed countries. Further, the author will introduce the anticircumvention provisions under several jurisdictions, and demonstrate the influences of the U.S. DMCA upon those anticircumvention provisions. The author will also explain how U.S. hard selling its DMCA-ish anticircumvention provisions into a world –wide by bilateral FTAs singed with countries who eager to trade with U.S., and by the threat of trade sanctions under the notorious Special 301 clause. Finally, in the respect of the special condition of Taiwan, where, as a net import country of copyright works, all copyright related laws are succeed and evolved from the U.S. copyright laws. How does Taiwan deal with the mass of issues followed by implanting an even severer vision of DMCA-ish anticircumvention provision is a difficult task to take, not to mention that the Fair Use doctrine in Taiwan’s Copyright Act is not a strong affirmative defense as such in the U.S.’s Copyright Act. Whether people in Taiwan are benefited or impaired by this customary succession of copyright laws needs to be deliberately reviewed and analyzed.