A comprehensive narrative review of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), analyzing its historical origins, political influences, and long-term impacts on digital copyright governance. It synthesizes scholarship from 1998–2024 to examine how international WIPO treaties, rapid technological change, and intensive industry lobbying shaped the Act’s development. The review evaluates the effects of anti-circumvention rules, safe harbor provisions, and platform liability frameworks on innovation, fair use, digital rights management, and platform power. It also outlines winners and losers under the current system, highlights tensions between federal uniformity and circuit-level judicial variation, and argues that evolving digital ecosystems, including AI, streaming, and platform governance, require substantial policy modernization. The paper concludes with a call for reassessment of the DMCA to better balance copyright protection, technological advancement, and public interest. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.28371224   ResearchGate Link: Adapting Copyright Law for the Digital Age