As Internet usage skyrocketed and evolved in the ’00s, copyright cases about the illegal use of music, text and images soared. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA) figured in several crucial court rulings.
Copyright owners scored an early victory in 2001, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit held in the Napster case that peer-to-peer file-sharing services could be liable for their users’ illegal music downloading. Four years later, in Grokster, the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in by ruling that peer-to-peer file-sharing services could be sued for marketing that encouraged users’ copyright infringement.
