How does the DMCA affect the public domain?
As more information migrates toward digital storage and distribution, the ability to quote, criticize, and make other “fair uses” of a large amount of our cultural artifacts may be practicably lost. Collections of works that contain only a limited amount of copyrightable subject matter, made up mostly of facts, or that contain other significant public domain materials, are vulnerable to being locked up by copyright owners behind technological protection systems. The protection of these “thin copyrights” behind access control mechanisms gives copyright owners control over works that are not intended to be protected by copyright law.
