The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act is the law that allows content owners to remove copyrighted material from the Internet, and it has made just about no one happy. Content owners are bitter that their material tends to keep popping up, even when they've asked for it to be removed hundreds or even thousands of times. Internet platforms that host large amounts of user-generated content must cope with millions of infringement allegations, mass-produced by software. When those algorithms make mistakes, it's often users who pay the price—told they're copyright scofflaws because there was background music in their home video or they shared a photo of a toy they bought.

If you're feeling down about the DMCA this winter—or feeling just skippy about it—there's a government agency that wants to hear from you. On December 31, the US Copyright Office said it intends to take public comments about the effectiveness of the DMCA and its "safe harbor" provisions.

The comments will be part of a "public study to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of the safe harbor provisions" of the DMCA. Questions that the office wants to consider include:

Are the section 512 safe harbors working as Congress intended?

Have courts properly construed the entities and activities covered by the section 512 safe harbors?

How have section 512's limitations on liability for online service providers impacted the growth and development of online services?

How have section 512's limitations on liability for online service providers impacted the protection and value of copyrighted works, including licensing markets for such works?

How effective is section 512's notice-and-takedown process for addressing online infringement?

How efficient or burdensome is section 512's notice-and-takedown process for addressing online infringement? Is it a workable solution over the long run?

Does the notice-and-takedown process sufficiently address the reappearance of infringing material previously removed by a service provider in response to a notice? If not, what should be done to address this concern?

Does the notice-and-takedown process sufficiently protect against fraudulent, abusive or unfounded notices? If not, what should be done to address this concern?

Other areas that commenters might wish to address include how well counter-notifications work (or don't), what to do when providers have "red flag" knowledge of infringement, and what to do about "repeat infringers." There are 30 numbered questions in all (but there's no requirement to address every point.) The questions and other information about the study are listed in the Federal Register notice.

Specific instructions on how to submit the comments will be posted by February 1 on the Copyright Office website, and comments are due by March 21. While a comment to the Copyright Office is a long way from influencing policy, the discussion could be interesting. Many of those on the receiving end of DMCA notices tend to think it's a "shoot first, ask questions later" approach to the problem, while content owners concerned about piracy have long held that the DMCA is too burdensome on them. As noted by Techdirt, which pointed out the Federal Register notice yesterday, content owners tend to favor changes that would require pro-active monitoring of content, where platforms would have to check for copyright violations before things are published on the Web. (Think of the battle royale in Viacom v. YouTube, which got resolved in part because YouTube did install automatic screening filters.)

The copyright office's request comes on the heels of a potentially high-impact decision in BMG v. Cox, a major DMCA battle in federal court, in which a judge ruled that Cox Communications didn't do enough to punish users engaged in piracy. December also saw perhaps more than its share of publicized DMCA takedown snafus, including the up-again, down-again saga of a Star Wars figure and a journalist whose jokey tweet was deleted after Bank of America sent a DMCA notice.

Update February 2: The Copyright Office apparently changed the relevant link. Instructions for comments can be left here.