Technically Legal

Wendy Selzter of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society authored a paper that argues for harsher constitutional scrutiny for the DMCA takedown procedure.

She makes a good point that a court would never authorize an injunction without first making a determination of whether the content actually infringed copyright, and then draws an analogy to the DMCA takedown procedure.

We’ll try to take a closer look at the arguments over the next couple of days and come back with more commentary.

2 Comments Posted in: Links on April 6, 2010

Gene Patents, eBay v. Tiffany’s, and a new round of RIAA style litigation.

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Judge Invalidates Some Gene Patents

Judge: Gene Patents Are Invalid
Myriad Loses Ruling Over Breast Cancer-Gene Patents
The Opinion

Appeals Court Backs eBay

eBay Mostly Beats Tiffany in the Second Circuit, but False Advertising Claims Remanded
The Opinion

Indie Movie Producers Send 20,000 demand letters

Extortion-Like Mass Automated Copyright Lawsuits Come To The US: 20,000 Filed, 30,000 More On The Way

Comments Off Posted in: Podcast on April 5, 2010

The jury in the SCO v. Novell suit returned a verdict in favor of Novell, saying that SCO does not own relevant copyrights in Linux and Unix. This could hail an end to a case that had dragged on for seven years. We should expect some kind of appeal, but we won’t know on what grounds for some time yet.

Comments Off Posted in: Links on March 30, 2010

Yesterday, we recorded a special edition of our podcast and devoted approximately 2/3 of the show to discussing the Viacom v. YouTube/Google arguments which were presented in their respective cross-motions for summary judgment. One of the most important pieces of the litigation is whether the DMCA section 512(c) safeharbor will apply to Google and whether Google might be secondarily liable for copyright infringement.  I felt it would be helpful to provide a quick and dirty guide to some of the liability principles at stake in the case.

Secondary liability, or “indirect liability,” attaches liability to certain intermediary entities and other persons who are not participating in an infringing act, but are somehow contributing, profiting, or inducing another person’s act of infringement. For example, this might apply to a person who owns and operates a website for the sole purpose of facilitating copyright infringement of song recordings–that operator is not downloading or uploading the sound recordings herself, and therefore is not directly infringing any copyrights, but is providing a medium for others to participate in infringing activities.  For you legal history afficionados, secondary liability dates has been recognized in various forms by courts at least as far back as the late 19th century (see e.g., Fishel v. Lueckel, 53 F. 499 (S.D.N.Y. 1892) (recognizing liability for profiting from infringement as a joint tortfeasor)).  Despite this, secondary liability has still not been codified in the Copyright Act.  Consequently, across federal jurisdictions the standards of secondary liability vary a little from court-to-court.  Nonetheless, secondary liability can be parsed into two categories: (1) contributory liability and (2) vicarious liability.

Scholars and practitioners devote hundreds of pages to discussing contributory and vicarious infringement.  I’m not here to make your eyes bleed.  So, please consider the following points a very broad overview:

Contributory Infringement: When a person, who has knowledge of a direct instance of infringement (e.g., another person uploading a unauthorized video), materially contributes to, *or*, actively induces the infringing conduct.

By a Materially Contribution: The contribution generally needs to add something to the original act of infringement.  For example, some courts have ruled that adding either software, hardware, and webspace, to provide a conduit to unlawfully exchange copyrighted works is enough.  In another case, the Ninth Circuit held the operators of a swap meet where independent vendors sold unauthorized copies of copyrighted works was sufficient to survive a motion to dismiss. Note, however, that under a contributory liability theory, a defendant must have knowledge that an act of infringement is occurring to be liable.

Or, by Inducement:  In 2005, the Supreme Court held in MGM v. Grokster that a person is liable for contributory infringement when she “distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement.”

Vicarious Infringement: When a person has the right and ability to supervise an infringing activity and derives a direct financial interest from the infringing activity.  Some courts have interpreted that this does not necessarily mean earned revenue, merely deriving some form of financial interest or financial incentives for tolerating unlawful from the infringing activity may suffice.   For example, check out the Napster litigation from 2001: A&M v. Napster, 239 F.3d 1004 (9th Cir. 2001).

As a final note, it’s important to remember that both the contributory and vicarious liability theories require there to be an original act of direct infringement.  In other words, there has to be another individual who violates the Copyright Act by directly misappropriating the exclusive rights of a copyright owner.

Enter Google, YouTube, and Viacom. Among the most interesting factoids which have surfaced from the summary judgment motions in the Viacom v. YouTube case, is that prior to Google’s acquisition, the founders and executives at YouTube were aware that the website was being used to upload unauthorized copyrighted content. Viacom’s motion quotes email excerpts from the executives who discuss the importance of allowing users to upload arguably infringing content because it was driving up website traffic, making the site an attractive acquisition target based on traffic metrics. Along one line of reasoning, the executives were inducing users to upload infringing content and may have actually participated in some of this. This would be the “smoking gun” argument. See, once YouTube was acquired by Google, Google has arguably assumed liability from actions which took place before the closing date–this is a very common occurrence in any corporate acquisition, but is often subject to the language in the agreement (buyer and seller can negotiate for certain terms and indemnity of liabilities).

What remains unclear, to some extent, is the amount of knowledge needed by the operators to impute secondary liability beyond the DMCA safeharbor. For instance, just because the YouTube executives knew that some videos were likely to have been uploaded without authorization that doesn’t mean they *actually* knew they were unauthorized. Consider this theory plausible deniability. Unless the executives took the time to check with the actual copyright owners, or unless they received a takedown notice or cease and desist notice, they arguably didn’t know with certainty that a particular upload was expressly unauthorized.

Here’s where the DMCA section 512 safeharbor comes into play.  In the past on our podcast and blog (here’s a more thorough overview I wrote), we’ve beaten to death the 17 U.S.C. 512(c) language, but it’s helpful to take a fresh look to see how the precise wording of the statute comes into play:

(c) Information Residing on Systems or Networks At Direction of Users.—

(1) In general.— A service provider shall not be liable for monetary relief, or, except as provided in subsection (j), for injunctive or other equitable relief, for infringement of copyright by reason of the storage at the direction of a user of material that resides on a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider, if the service provider—

(A)

(i) does not have actual knowledge that the material or an activity using the material on the system or network is infringing;

(ii) in the absence of such actual knowledge, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent; or

(iii) upon obtaining such knowledge or awareness, acts expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material;

(B) does not receive a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity, in a case in which the service provider has the right and ability to control such activity; and

(C) upon notification of claimed infringement as described in paragraph (3), responds expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity.

Note 512(c)(1)(A)(i)-(iii), in bold above.  That’s the statutory language concerning the level of knowledge that potentially implicates a service provider with infringement by a user.   Of particular interest to me is (ii), which states that if a service provider is aware of “facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent,” the service provider cannot take advantage of the safehabor.   Depending on how the court applies this language, Google might find themselves in hot water based on the email exchanges of the previous YouTube executives.   However, it’s not black and white.  Just last year, we saw the UMG v. Veoh case, in which a California Federal Court ruled that a “blanket notice” for the purposes of DMCA takedowns was insufficient to shift the burden of copyright policing to Veoh.  This is important, because if the Viacom and YouTube court decides to follow this reasoning,  it gives YouTube some of the aforementioned plausible deniability– if there were no notices specifically indicating the exact uploads which were infringing, it might be insufficient to impute actual knowledge on YouTube.

Google has separately argued in their motion that Viacom participated in stealth marketing tactics which would have made it very difficult to determine whether an upload was in fact authorized by Viacom but uploaded by another person.  Additionally, Google points to evidence that Viacom had disparate internal policies under which they allowed certain unauthorized videos to remain on YouTube, without flagging or sending any notices to YouTube.  This obviously would make it much more difficult for the YouTube executives to independently determine an upload to be infringing without notice.  You simply can’t act as a filter if you don’t actually know who is responsible for a particular file.

I do think this is a factually fascinating case and it’s too close to speculate what the court is likely to do.  There’s also more detail worthy of  discussion on this case that would make this post pages and pages long.  Check out the plethora of commentary from the legal blogosphere  for additional takes on this case.  It’s also worth listening to our show (which will post tonight, around 12AM EST) and hearing myself, Ben, and Dominik debate the merits from different points of view.  We dove into much deeper detail on the specifics.

Other Bloggers’ takes:

Ben Sheffner (Copyrights & Campaigns)

Eric Goldman (Technology Law and Marketing)

EFF (Deeplinks)

Mike Masnick (TechDirt)

Nate Anderson (Ars Technica)

Comments Off Posted in: Analysis, Commentary on March 22, 2010

This afternoon Planet Money, a killer NPR podcast, posted this plea on its twitter account:

We’re looking for a photo of the “Hotel California” album that we can legally use on the blog. Anyone have a copy they could photo for us?

They were rightly concerned that they couldn’t use someone else’s photo without their permission. What they missed is that it still would have been infringement t o use a licensed photo of the cover of Hotel California. They wouldn’t be infringing the photographers rights. However, the Eagles, their label, or an artist somewhere, owns the copyright in the cover of the Hotel California record. Just taking a photograph of something doesn’t get rid of the copyright in the original work, as the US Postal Service learned earlier this month.

We don’t want to claim any responsibility for this, but they did not end up using the cover of Hotel California for the final post.

Comments Off Posted in: Analysis on March 15, 2010

Innocent infringement off the table, Apple sues HTC, and is it illegal to poach tickets?

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Innocent infringement off the table

5th Circuit rules innocent infringement defense not supported in Maverick v Harper
The opinion

Apple Sues HTC

Apple sues HTC over iPhone patents
Apple sues HTC–court filings
Apple HTC Complaint U.S. Google & HTC

Poaching Gaga Tickets

Couldn’t Get Those Coveted Gaga Tickets? Here’s Why
Four Charged in Bid To Buy, Resell Tickets

Comments Off Posted in: Podcast on March 9, 2010

Yesterday I mentioned on our twitter feed that the Supreme Court released an opinion relating to copyright law. Evan Brown, of Internet Cases and a regular TWiL panelist, wrote up a post that goes over the facts and ruling of the case. This case is a little dry, but if you’re interested, please hop over to his blog and check it out.

Comments Off Posted in: Links on March 3, 2010

What damages for false DMCA takedown notices, employer liability for employee statements, Facebook Patents the newsfeed.

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Damages in False DMCA takedown

Rare Ruling on Damages for Sending Bogus Copyright Takedown Notice–Lenz v. Universal
Rossi Case

FTC Guidelines on Employer Liability for Employee Blog Posts

Potential Employer Liability for Employee Online Statements: New Guidelines by the Federal Trade Commission

Facebook Patents the Newsfeed

Facebook’s news-feed patent could mean lawsuits
Facebook Patents The News Feed (Updated)
The Patent

UPDATE: There seems to have been a glitch with the first post. Hopefully this will fix it.

Comments Off Posted in: Podcast on March 3, 2010

We’ve covered the Redbox suit before and are a little sad to report that they’ve agreed to Warner’s demands not to rent new releases for 28 days. Warner hopes that this will boost sales of DVDs. Presumably because if people didn’t want to see a movie in the theater, they will run out and buy the DVD, rather than just waiting another month before renting it. That makes sense? Right?

This announcement comes on the heels of Netflix caving to Warner’s demands in January.

Comments Off Posted in: Links on February 16, 2010

White House and Copyright, Streaming the Olympics, FBI and the Fourth Amendment

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White House and Copyrights

White House Makes Full Copyright Claim on Photos
Another Obama right-of-publicity violation; NY Times gets results!

Streaming the Olympics

Why you can’t see live streaming of Olympics — at least not legally

FBI and the Fourth Amendment

On the FBI, the Fourth Amendment and Your Cell Phone

Comments Off Posted in: Podcast on February 15, 2010