Being a digital citizen comes with roles and responsibilities, much like any other society in the physical world. Digital content and work have an owner and are often shared with the masses to consume knowledge or enjoyment. However, some instances using someone else’s work for entertainment or consumption by others without credit for monetization can lead to copyright and Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) violations. Chung (2020) reports that DMCA was used as a takedown mechanism for content creators to improperly use it by claiming material that was not their original work. To pass this, most content creators on YouTube and other social media would include a Copywrite statement and ownership statements of where the content originated, similar to how academic papers are citing their sources.
The primary measure with information technology as authors and creators has begun using Mobile Digital Rights Management (M-DRM) to secure their work. Using these technical safeguards, M-DRM has four entities that make it function. Thus, they are (1) Content Provider, (2) Content User, (3) License Server, and (4) Mobile User. These roles are what make the exchange of information happen. If one component is out of sync, then it triggers algorithms of copyright and DMCA reviews. Finally, there is E-DRM (Enterprise Digital Rights Management) with a similar chain of responsibilities on the corporate scale (Dharminder, 2021). The importance of protecting the artist/creator of the content is as high as ever; striking those who use the content, even after acknowledging and citing the source, can still land the users in hot water. So knowing and understanding the copyright laws and understanding their role as digital citizens is heavily influential in the digital age.
References
Chung, T. S. (2020). Fair use quotation licenses: A private-sector solution to DMCA takedown abuse on YouTube. The Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts, 44(1), 69. https://doi.org/10.52214/jla.v44i1.7311
Dharminder, D. (2021). LWEDM: Learning with error-based secure mobile digital rights management system. Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies, 32(2), n/a. https://doi.org/10.1002/ett.4199