Multistakeholder Forum on the DMCA notice and takedown system

The Green Paper published by the Internet Policy Task Force (IPTF) in 2013 identified five copyright policy issues critical to economic growth, job creation, and cultural development on which the IPTF planned to conduct further work, including:

  • The legal framework for the creation of remixes.
  • The relevance and scope of the first sale doctrine in the digital environment.
  • Appropriate calibration of statutory damages, in the contexts of individual file sharers and of secondary liability for large-scale online infringement.
  • Improving the operation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s (DMCA) notice and takedown system.
  • How the government can facilitate the further development of a robust online licensing environment.

On the issue of improving the operation of the DMCA's notice and takedown system, the IPTF established a Multistakeholder Forum for consensus-building among stakeholders. Its goal was to identify best practices and produce voluntary agreements for improving the operation of the DMCA’s notice and takedown system without the need for legislative changes.

The Multistakeholder Forum kicked off in March 2014, with a broad range of stakeholders participating, including right holders and individual creators, service providers of different sizes, and consumer and public interest representatives. Follow-up meetings took place approximately every six weeks through the end of 2014, and a final document, “DMCA Notice-and-Takedown Processes: List of Good, Bad, and Situational Practices,” was issued in April 2015.