• Intenet TV is copyright law's newest enemy.Internet investment concept image by Christopher Meder from Fotolia.com
  
  It goes without saying that you can find almost anything online. The Internet is an international space which is constantly expanding and evolving, and is notoriously difficult to regulate. For Internet TV viewers out there, regulations are becoming something of a problem. Websites such as Peekvid and YouTube have had legal troubles, and numerous others have been forced to shut down due to copyright infringement. This is the area of law that is shutting down websites, and it is the basis for Internet TV's government regulations.
  
  

1967 Copyright Act

• The Department of Justice's 2002 report on Intellectual Property Theft gives a clear run down of the evolution of copyright law. The 1967 Copyright Act provided the general laws regarding copyright infringement. It is an elaboration on a set of basic laws (passed in 1897) that prohibited the replication of music or dramas without the copyright owners' permission. As technology moved on, the law changed to accommodate, and we now have more specific rules prohibiting the reproduction or unauthorized recording of films, albums and live performances. Obviously these earlier rules were established without specific reference to Internet TV, but the booming online industry encourages and perhaps even facilitates the breaking of these basic government regulations.
  
  

1997 NET Act

• This was the first act to relate specifically to the Internet. The No Electronic Theft (NET) Act made the online distribution of copyrighted material illegal. The effects of this were made quite apparent in the famous case of A&M Records v. Napster. Internet TV websites are in direct breach of this law if they display or distribute copyrighted content without permission from the copyright holder. This has caused video-giant YouTube to have strict rules regarding copyrighted material. If the copyright holder requests a clip to be taken down, the website has to comply.
  
  YouTube does contain copyrighted material, however, and as long as it is authorized by the owner, there is no legal issue at all. There are many websites where you can watch Internet TV legally, so there is little need to even visit an illegal website. For example, NBC, CNN and ESPN's websites let you catch up on TV for free, and there are even websites which offer movies legally.
  
  

1998 Digital Milennium Copyright Act

• The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) increased the penalties of Internet-based copyright infringement, and also introduced laws against bypassing or manipulating any systems in place to prevent copyright infringement. So even if you don't actually break copyright law, if you circumvent any measure designed to protect it, you are also breaking the law.
  
  For Internet TV, these regulations begin to affect websites like Peek Vid, which merely linked to infringing content. It is easy to understand how they could have been seen to be facilitating the breaking of the NET Act, and the government is tightening the regulations, although linking laws still remain hazy. As is evident from Web TV Wire's interview with linking law expert Stephen Ott, the bottom line is that if you receive a DMCA request to take down a link to material that is not authorized by the copyright owner, you must comply if you want to keep your website up.