Industry Resources: Legislation

U.S. Code Title 17, the federal copyright law.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a United States copyright law. It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services that are used to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works (commonly known as DRM) and criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, even when there is no infringement of copyright itself. It also heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet.

The United States Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA) is a proposed law. It intends to set up consistent rules to govern software licensing, online access, and other computer information transactions. UCITA has been extremely controversial and is opposed by some consumer groups and state attorneys general, because they believe it is too favorable toward software producers.

The 1997 "No Electronic Theft (NET)" Act strengthens the copyright and trademark laws. It ammends Titles 17 and 18 of the U.S. Code to clarify the law’s application and penalties.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 made far-reaching reforms of U.S. business practices. The legislation establishes new standards for all U.S. public company boards, management, and public accounting firms. The impact for IT management is the increased focus on controls on processes that involve the assets of the company. Sarbanes-Oxley has led to increased focus on COBIT®, Control Objectives for Information and related Technology published by ISACA, http://www.isaca.org/ as well as ITIL, the Information Technology Infrastructure Library®, published by The Office of Government Compliance (OGC)