secondary liability

“To Do” vs. “To Authorize”

November 06, 2012 · Devlin Hartline · 1 comment

Today’s guest post comes from Copyhype contributor Devlin Hartline.

On its face, the Copyright Act provides that copyright owners actually have two separate sets of rights. Section 106 of the Act gives copyright owners the exclusive rights “to do” and “to authorize” certain listed activities with their copyrighted works, including creating reproductions, making adaptations, distributing copies to the public, publicly performing them, and publicly displaying them.¹ It’s clear enough what it means “to do” any of those listed activities, but what does it mean “to authorize” them? Moreover, does merely authorizing someone else to infringe lead to liability even if that party doesn’t actually infringe?

Section 501 of the Act provides that “[a]nyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner” is an infringer.² It matters not whether they violated the exclusive right “to do” or “to authorize” the listed activity. Either way it’s infringement and they’re an infringer, subject to the full range of remedies under the Act. Nonetheless, as the Supreme Court has noted, distinguishing between different types of infringement is not always easy since “the lines between direct infringement, contributory infringement, and vicarious liability are not clearly drawn.”³

Under the 1909 Copyright Act, courts “came to mixed conclusions about how much involvement in infringing was necessary to subject a defendant to liability for an infringement.”⁴ The doctrinal disarray was not helped by the fact that the previous Act “did not specifically state that the copyright holder had the exclusive right to authorize use” of the copyrighted work.⁵ But that all changed with the addition of the right “to authorize” in the 1976 Copyright Act, which “was intended to remove the confusion surrounding contributory and vicarious infringement.”⁶

But can merely authorizing a listed activity itself be infringement without more? In other words, can one who authorizes an infringement be liable even if that authorized infringement never occurs? That depends on whether the exclusive right “to authorize” is seen as an independent right that stands on its own. The relevant House Report has surprisingly little to say about the newly-minted right “to authorize,” though it does suggest that the right doesn’t stand alone:

The exclusive rights accorded to a copyright owner under section 106 are ‘to do and to authorize‘ any of the activities specified in the five numbered clauses. Use of the phrase ‘to authorize’ is intended to avoid any questions as to the liability of contributory infringers. For example, a person who lawfully acquires an authorized copy of a motion picture would be an infringer if he or she engages in the business of renting it to others for purposes of unauthorized public performance.⁷

The reason it matters is because direct infringers are always liable to the copyright owner, while indirect infringers are only liable if the authorized infringement actually occurs.⁸ Thus, if the exclusive right “to authorize” is in fact merely a codification of existing secondary liability doctrines, then one who authorizes an infringement has no liability unless the party authorized actually infringes. On the other hand, if the exclusive right “to authorize” stands alone, then mere authorization of an infringement is itself infringement—even if the party authorized doesn’t actually infringe.

In his influential copyright treatise, Nimmer posits that a “far more perplexing question is whether direct infringement must even exist in order for third-party liability to arise.”⁹ He thinks that reading the Act to create liability for mere authorization without actual infringement is “overly facile,” and that “to authorize” should be seen as “simply a convenient peg on which Congress chose to hang the antecedent jurisprudence of third-party liability.”¹⁰ He concludes that “the rule should generally prevail that third party liability, as its name implies, may exist only when direct liability, i.e., infringement, is present.”¹¹

A few district courts have disagreed with Nimmer and found that the right “to authorize” stands alone. For example, one district court stated that “Congress created a new form of ‘direct’ infringement” when the Act was amended to add the right “to authorize.”¹² Another district court stated that “tying the authorization right solely to a claim of justiciable contributory infringement appears contrary both to well-reasoned precedent, statutory text, and legislative history.”¹³ That court held that merely authorizing infringing acts could itself constitute direct infringement.

A different district court followed suit and stated that Section 106 should be read literally to create an independent, exclusive right “to authorize” use of a copyrighted work.¹⁴ That court held that “mere authorization . . . constitutes direct infringement and is actionable under United States Copyright Law.”¹⁵ And in yet another district court, it was held that infringement commences at the moment that authorization occurs, because “the right ‘to authorize’ infringing acts” was itself “a right newly recognized by Congress.”¹⁶ But these four district courts represent the minority view, and no appellate court that I could find has ever agreed.

In fact, the appellate courts that have addressed the issue have instead agreed with Nimmer, as have the district courts that have cited them. In a leading case, the Ninth Circuit stated that “the addition of the words ‘to authorize’ in the 1976 Act appears best understood as merely clarifying that the Act contemplates liability for contributory infringement . . . .”¹⁷ The court of appeals quoted Nimmer for the proposition that Congress was merely codifying the preexisting “jurisprudence of third party liability.”¹⁸ Accordingly, the appellate court found that the authorization right is only implicated in cases of contributory infringement, i.e., where there is also direct infringement.

The First Circuit took a similar tack while addressing the issue of whether authorization is infringement “where there is no adequate proof that the third party ever undertook an infringing act.”¹⁹ The court of appeals noted that “most (perhaps all) courts that have considered the question have taken the view that a listed infringing act (beyond authorization) is required for a claim.”²⁰ While acknowledging that “the better bare-language reading would allow” a claim for mere authorization, the appellate court nonetheless held that there must be proof “of an infringing act after the authorization.”²¹

The district court in the famous Jammie Thomas-Rasset case considered whether merely “making available” song files in a peer-to-peer share folder violated plaintiffs’ exclusive right “to authorize” distributions. (This was in addition to its consideration of whether Thomas-Rasset violated plaintiffs’ exclusive right “to do” distributions, as I wrote about previously.) After surveying the statutory text, case law, and legislative history, the district court concluded that “the authorization clause merely provides a statutory foundation for secondary liability, not a means of expanding the scope of direct infringement liability.”²² Moreover, said the district court, “the authorization right . . . only applies if there is an actual dissemination.”²³

Bringing us back to the Copyright Act, it’s safe to say that while the plain wording of Section 106 appears to create an independent, exclusive right “to authorize” the listed activities, the majority view is that the right “to authorize” doesn’t stand alone and that one who authorizes an infringement is only liable if the authorized infringement actually takes place.

Follow me on Twitter: @devlinhartline

Footnotes

17 U.S.C.A. § 106 (West 2012) (“the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following: (1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords; (2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work; (3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending; (4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly; (5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and (6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.”). [↩]
17 U.S.C.A. § 501 (West 2012). [↩]
Sony Corp. of Am. v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417, 435, n.17 (1984) (internal quotations omitted). [↩]
Peter Starr Prod. Co. v. Twin Cont’l Films, Inc., 783 F.2d 1440, 1443 (9th Cir. 1986). [↩]
Id. (emphasis in original). [↩]
Id. [↩]
H.R. REP. 94-1476, 61. [↩]
See, e.g., 1 Goldstein, Copyright: Principles, Law and Practice § 6.1, at 705 (1989) (“It is definitional that, for a defendant to be held contributorily . . . liable, a direct infringement must have occurred.”). [↩]
3-12 Nimmer on Copyright § 12.04[D][1]. [↩]
Id. [↩]
Id. [↩]
ITSI T.V. Productions, Inc. v. California Auth. of Racing Fairs, 785 F.Supp. 854, 860 (E.D. Cal. 1992). [↩]
Curb v. MCA Records, Inc., 898 F. Supp. 586, 594 (M.D. Tenn. 1995). [↩]
Expediters Int’l of Washington, Inc. v. Direct Line Cargo Mgmt. Services, Inc., 995 F. Supp. 468, 476 (D.N.J. 1998). [↩]
Id. at 477. [↩]
Thomas v. Pansy Ellen Products, Inc., 672 F. Supp. 237, 241 (W.D.N.C. 1987). [↩]
Subafilms, Ltd. v. MGM-Pathe Communications Co., 24 F.3d 1088, 1093 (9th Cir. 1994). [↩]
Id. (internal quotations and brackets omitted). [↩]
Venegas-Hernandez v. ACEMLA, 424 F.3d 50, 57 (1st Cir. 2005). [↩]
Id. at 57. [↩]
Id. at 59. [↩]
Capitol Records, Inc. v. Thomas, 579 F.Supp.2d 1210, 1221 (D. Minn. 2008). [↩]
Id. at 1223. [↩]

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Twitter’s Potential Secondary Liability

September 20, 2012 · Devlin Hartline · 5 comments

Today’s guest post comes from Copyhype contributor Devlin Hartline.

Last week, Seattle-based photographer Christopher Boffoli sued Twitter in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington for contributory copyright infringement. Boffoli is well-known for his “Disparity Series,” which according to the complaint is “a series of art photographs featuring miniature figures in whimsical poses on fruit.” Seattle Magazine has a brief article about the series. Boffoli’s case was also a topic of discussion on the most recent episode of “This Week in Law” (where Terry Hart was a guest).

In the complaint, Boffoli alleges that Twitter users uploaded several of his copyrighted photographs without license or permission and then linked to them in various tweets. Some images were hosted on Twitter’s own servers, while others were hosted on servers operated by third-parties. Boffoli claims that even though he sent four DMCA takedown notices to Twitter’s registered agent for receiving such notices, none of the hosted links or images were removed.

As such, Boffoli alleges that Twitter is liable for willful contributory infringement because (1) it had actual knowledge of infringement provided by his DMCA takedown notices, and (2) it materially contributed to the underlying infringements by Twitter’s users.

Ars Technica and Techdirt ran articles about the lawsuit last week. Both pointed out that Twitter’s failure to respond to the DMCA takedown notices doesn’t necessarily mean that the service provider is liable for infringement. That much is true, but it was also suggested in both articles that Twitter wasn’t likely to be liable for infringement despite its failure to remove the links and images complained of. It’s that notion that I’ll examine more closely.

DMCA Notice-and-Takedown

The DMCA¹ notice-and-takedown provisions are no doubt familiar. Title II of the DMCA, titled the “Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act,” created Section 512² of the Copyright Act—what people often are referring to when they talk about the “DMCA,” even though it’s only one part. It’s here that the notice-and-takedown provisions are found. The idea is simple: A copyright owner who finds infringing material on a service provider’s system sends notice to the service provider who then takes it down.

The “DMCA did not simply rewrite copyright law for the on-line world,” but rather, “it crafted a number of safe harbors which insulate ISPs from most liability should they be accused of violating traditional copyright law.”³ The DMCA uses a classic carrot-and-stick approach to get service providers to play along. The carrot of limited liability within the safe harbors is enforced by the stick of full liability without. This “preserves strong incentives for service providers and copyright owners to cooperate to detect and deal with copyright infringements that take place in the digital networked environment.”⁴

When a third-party user stores material on a service provider’s system, the provider’s potential copyright liability is greatly reduced if it “responds expeditiously to remove, or disable access to,” the material upon notice that it “is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity.”⁵ Thus, to moor in the safe harbors, a service provider must quickly take down allegedly infringing material when notified. Once in the safe harbors, a service provider is only potentially liable for limited injunctive relief—it’s not potentially liable for monetary relief as it would be otherwise.

A common misperception is in thinking that a service provider that qualifies for the safe harbors cannot be liable for infringement. The DMCA itself is irrelevant to determining whether the service provider is an infringer. The safe harbors limit liability, but they “do not affect the question of ultimate liability under the various doctrines of direct, vicarious, and contributory” infringement.⁶ After it’s determined that a service provider is an infringer in the first place, the safe harbors can be used to assess the extent of the liability. Although as a practical matter, courts usually start with the analysis of the safe harbors first.⁷

Nor does the fact that a service provider fails to qualify for the safe harbors necessarily mean that it is liable for infringement. Such a service provider “is still entitled to all other arguments under the law—whether by way of an affirmative defense or through an argument that conduct simply does not constitute a prima facie case of infringement under the Copyright Act.”⁸ This make sense because the material complained of may not even be infringing or the service provider may qualify for some defense. Just because its liability isn’t limited by the safe harbors, it doesn’t mean that the service provider is liable in the first place.

Immunity under the safe harbors is not presumptive, and it’s only granted to service providers who do not have knowledge, either actual or constructive, of infringement. The “DMCA’s protection of an innocent service provider disappears at the moment the service provider loses its innocence, i.e., at the moment it becomes aware that a third party is using its system to infringe.”⁹ One common way to alert a service provider of infringement is via a takedown notice, which is effective only if it “includes substantially” certain elements listed in the statute.¹⁰

Contributory Infringement

With “roots in the tort-law concepts of enterprise liability and imputed intent,” contributory infringement is a type of secondary copyright liability.¹¹ It follows from the common law doctrine that “one who knowingly participates in or furthers a tortious act is jointly and severally liable with the prime tortfeasor,” a concept that applies in copyright law as it does in numerous other areas of the law.¹² Put simply, contributory infringement is the idea that a person who contributes to the infringement of another is held liable for the infringement they helped to bring about.

The courts have formulated different tests for contributory infringement, but they all share the same basic elements. The test in the Ninth Circuit, where Boffoli filed his suit against Twitter, is simple: “one contributorily infringes when he (1) has knowledge of another’s infringement and (2) either (a) materially contributes to or (b) induces that infringement.”¹³ Inducement infringement, identified by the Supreme Court in the Grokster opinion,¹⁴ is not at issue here. Boffoli is claiming traditional contributory infringement, which has two elements: (1) knowledge, and (2) material contribution.

As to the knowledge element, contributory infringement “requires that the secondary infringer know or have reason to know of direct infringement.”¹⁵ In other words, either actual or constructive knowledge will suffice. It’s not enough that a service provider merely supplies the means of accomplishing infringement.¹⁶ Instead, there must be knowledge of “specific information which identifies infringing activity” before liability attaches.¹⁷ This makes sense because without specific knowledge, a service provider wouldn’t know what items to remove to avoid liability.

The relationship between knowledge and intent should also be noted. An explicit finding of intent is not “necessary to support liability for contributory copyright infringement.”¹⁸ Under the “rules of fault-based liability derived from the common law,”¹⁹ the “intention to cause the natural and probable consequences” of one’s conduct may be imputed.²⁰ It’s not mandatory to find that a service provider actually intended to contribute to the underlying infringement. Instead, a “knowing failure to prevent infringing actions” can be the basis for imposing contributory liability.²¹

Generally speaking, the material contribution element “turns on whether the activity in question substantially assists direct infringement.”²² In the internet context, the Ninth Circuit last year held that there “is no question that providing direct infringers with server space satisfies” this standard because it is “an essential step in the infringement process.”²³ The alleged material contribution must have a direct connection to the infringement such that it assists or enables internet users to locate infringing content.²⁴

In the famous Napster case, the Ninth Circuit held that “if a computer system operator learns of specific infringing material available on his system and fails to purge such material from the system, the operator knows of and contributes to direct infringement.”²⁵ The appellate court concluded that “Napster materially contributes to the infringing activity,” since without its help, “Napster users could not find and download the music they want” as easily.²⁶ To impose contributory liability, it was enough that “Napster provides the site and facilities for direct infringement.”²⁷

Similarly, the Ninth Circuit in Perfect 10 stated that “a computer system operator can be held contributorily liable if it has actual knowledge that specific infringing material is available using its system and can take simple measures to prevent further damage to copyrighted works yet continues to provide access to infringing works.”²⁸ The court of appeals held that “Google could be held contributorily liable if it had knowledge that infringing . . . images were available using its search engine, could take simple measures to prevent further damage to [plaintiff’s] copyrighted works, and failed to take such steps.”²⁹

Putting it all together, I think Boffoli has a good chance of success on the merits of his claim. If he sent DMCA takedown notices to Twitter that complied substantially with the elements listed in the statute, then Twitter will have lost its innocence and will be deemed to have knowledge of the infringement (should there actually be any). Once knowledge is established, Twitter’s intent to cause the infringement will be imputed. And as to material contribution, Twitter is assisting and enabling its users to find the infringing content it provides on its system.

This is similar to the situation in Napster, where the Ninth Circuit held that Napster could be liable as a contributory infringer for failing to remove material it knew to be infringing. This is also similar to the circumstances in Perfect 10, where the Ninth Circuit held that Google could be liable as a contributory infringer for failing to remove links to infringing images once alerted to their presence. Here, Twitter is failing to remove both links and images.

That said, it’s kind of hard to understand why Twitter hasn’t removed the links and images Boffoli complained of. Perhaps there’s more going on here than meets the eye, but under the allegations in the complaint, it seems to me that Twitter could be contributorily liable for whatever infringement is taking place of Boffoli’s copyrighted images.

Follow me on Twitter: @devlinhartline

Footnotes

Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Pub.L. No. 105-304, 112 Stat. 2860 (1998) (codified as amended in scattered sections of 17 U.S.C. and at 28 U.S.C. § 4001). [↩]
17 U.S.C.A. § 512 (West 2012); Section 512 codified the principles developed by the district court in Religious Tech. Ctr. v. Netcom On-Line Commc’n Services, Inc., 907 F.Supp. 1361 (N.D. Cal. 1995). [↩]
Ellison v. Robertson, 189 F.Supp.2d 1051, 1061 (C.D. Cal. 2002). [↩]
H.R. Conf. Rep. 105-796, 72 (1998). [↩]
See 17 U.S.C.A. § 512(c)(1)(C) (West 2012) (“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– *** 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.”). [↩]
Perfect 10, Inc. v. Cybernet Ventures, Inc., 213 F.Supp.2d 1146, 1174 (C.D. Cal. 2002). [↩]
See, e.g., Costar Group Inc. v. Loopnet, Inc., 164 F.Supp.2d 688, 699 (D. Md. 2001) (“The existence of the safe harbor convolutes the analysis of copyright infringement which, theoretically, should proceed in a straight line. Ideally, CoStar would have to make a prima facie showing that LoopNet was liable of contributory infringement and then the court would turn to the question of whether the “safe harbor” provided a defense. However, because the parameters of the liability protection provided by the “safe harbor” are not contiguous with the bounds of liability for contributory infringement, the analysis may proceed more efficiently if issues are decided a bit out of order. On summary judgment, it is often appropriate for a court to decide issues out of the traditional order because a dispute of fact is only material if it can affect the outcome of a proceeding. Anderson, 477 U.S. at 248, 106 S.Ct. 2505. Thus, to the extent, if at all, that LoopNet is entitled to summary judgment in its safe harbor defense, all other issues concerning damages liability for contributory infringement would be rendered immaterial.”). [↩]
CoStar Group, Inc. v. LoopNet, Inc., 373 F.3d 544, 552 (4th Cir. 2004). [↩]
ALS Scan, Inc. v. RemarQ Communities, Inc., 239 F.3d 619, 625 (4th Cir. 2001). [↩]
17 U.S.C.A. § 512(c)(3)(A) (West 2012) (“To be effective under this subsection, a notification of claimed infringement must be a written communication provided to the designated agent of a service provider that includes substantially the following: (i) A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed. (ii) Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, if multiple copyrighted works at a single online site are covered by a single notification, a representative list of such works at that site. (iii) Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the material. (iv) Information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to contact the complaining party, such as an address, telephone number, and, if available, an electronic mail address at which the complaining party may be contacted. (v) A statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law. (vi) A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.”). [↩]
Perfect 10, Inc. v. Visa Int’l Serv. Ass’n, 494 F.3d 788, 795 (9th Cir. 2007). [↩]
1 Niel Boorstyn, Boorstyn On Copyright § 10.06[2], at 10-21 (1994). [↩]
Perfect 10, 494 F.3d at 795; it should be noted too that contributory infringement requires direct infringement to have occurred before liability attaches; see 1 Goldstein, Copyright: Principles, Law and Practice § 6.1, at 705 (1989) (“It is definitional that, for a defendant to be held contributorily . . . liable, a direct infringement must have occurred.”). [↩]
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., 545 U.S. 913 (2005) (the Court held that “one who 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, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties.”). [↩]
A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc., 239 F.3d 1004, 1020 (9th Cir. 2001). [↩]
See, e.g., Sony Corp. of Am. v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417, 436 (1984). [↩]
Napster, 239 F.3d at 1021. [↩]
Louis Vuitton Malletier, S.A. v. Akanoc Solutions, Inc., 658 F.3d 936, 943 (9th Cir. 2011). [↩]
Grokster, 545 U.S. at 934-35. [↩]
DeVoto v. Pac. Fid. Life Ins. Co., 618 F.2d 1340, 1347 (9th Cir. 1980); see also Restatement (Second) of Torts § 8A (1965) (“All consequences which the actor desires to bring about are intended, as the word is used in this Restatement. Intent is not, however, limited to consequences which are desired. If the actor knows that the consequences are certain, or substantially certain, to result from his act, and still goes ahead, he is treated by the law as if he had in fact desired to produce the result.”). [↩]
Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., 508 F.3d 1146, 1172 (9th Cir. 2007). [↩]
Louis Vuitton, 658 F.3d at 943 (internal quotations omitted). [↩]
Id. (internal quotations omitted). [↩]
Perfect 10, 494 F.3d at 797. [↩]
Napster, 239 F.3d at 1021. [↩]
Id. at 1022. [↩]
Id. [↩]
Perfect 10, 508 F.3d at 1172 (internal quotations and citations omitted). [↩]
Id. [↩]

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Copyright Liability for Filelockers: Disney v Hotfile

August 20, 2012 · Terry Hart · 1 comment

On Friday, the Florida Southern District Court held a hearing on several dispositive motions in litigation between film studios and popular file-locker Hotfile.

Major film studios — including Disney, 20th Century Fox, Universal City, Columbia Pictures, and Warner Bros. — sued Hotfile in February 2011 for copyright infringement and secondary copyright infringement. The studios also brought a claim against Hotfile’s owner and operator, Anton Titov, for personal liability. In July, the court dismissed the claim for direct copyright infringement but allowed the claims for inducement, contributory infringement, and vicarious liability to go forward. Hotfile raised a number of defenses in its answer to the complaint, notably that it is protected by the DMCA safe harbor, and also brought a counterclaim against Warner Bros., alleging the film studio had made material misrepresentations in thousands of DMCA takedown notices it had sent to Hotfile. Both parties moved for summary judgment earlier this year.¹

Though this is not the first infringement suit against file-lockers — Hotfile itself has been sued several times² — it is notable for being one of the first suits initiated by major film studios against a popular file-locker. If the case progresses, it may prove influential in shaping copyright law online.

The claims of the studios are similar to claims in other copyright cases involving online service providers. It is alleged that Hotfile engaged in massive, commercial infringement by actively facilitating the reproduction and distribution of unauthorized TV shows and movies through its service. The studios point to Hotfile’s “affiliate program” that pays users for uploading popular files with the most downloads. Hotfile also operates a referral program that generates income for third-party sites that link to Hotfile content, the result of which, the studios allege, “is that Hotfile effectively partners, and acts in concert, with a vast array of pirate link sites and other affiliates to advertise and promote the infringing content on Hotfile’s servers.” Finally, like Megaupload, Hotfile is alleged to stymie takedowns of infringing content by making multiple copies of every file uploaded, each with a separate link. As the studios state:

Defendants protest that Hotfile is not like Napster, Grokster, Limewire, and other notorious infringers. But the differences make Hotfile’s infringement more egregious, not less. No earlier pirate services had the temerity actually to pay its users to upload infringing content. Hotfile does. Hotfile’s own economist acknowledges that Hotfile’s practice of paying uploaders (Hotfile’s so-called “Affiliates”) based on how many times their files are downloaded induces the uploading of “popular” (i.e., infringing) content. Additionally, unlike previous adjudicated infringers, which facilitated access to content stored on users’ computers, Hotfile itself physically stores all the infringing content on its own servers, giving it an unprecedented ability to stop the infringement – an ability Hotfile chooses not to exercise. Finally, Hotfile’s business model is indistinguishable from that of the website Megaupload, which recently was indicted criminally for engaging in the very same conduct as Hotfile. Defendants even admit that they formed Hotfile “to compete with” Megaupload.

The motions

On motion for summary judgment, the studios argue that Hotfile is ineligible for safe harbor protection because it failed to reasonably implement a repeat infringer policy, it failed to comply with the DMCA agent designation requirements, it had disqualifying knowledge — including actual knowledge of specific infringing files, “red flag” knowledge, and willful blindness — and it induced infringement.

On the first point, the studios note that Hotfile had the ability to track the number of takedown notices that individual users were responsible for (“strikes”), but it took no steps to terminate repeat infringers — a number of individual uploaders had accumulated over three hundred strikes without being terminated. The studios also note that over half of all downloads on Hotfile come from files uploaded by users with three or more strikes.

The last point, concerning the lack of knowledge requirement for safe harbor protection, has been the subject of recent court decisions in Viacom v. YouTube, from the Second Circuit, and UMG v. Veoh, from the Ninth.³ It appears that this is the first time a court in the Eleventh Circuit has been confronted with interpreting these provisions of the DMCA. This portion of the DMCA states that a service provider is only eligible for safe harbor protection if it “does not have actual knowledge that the material or an activity using the material on the system or network is infringing,” or “in the absence of such actual knowledge, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent.” The above cases focused primarily on the scope of the latter, so-called “red flag” knowledge.

Here, the studios point to several “red flags” that should have made Hotfile aware of infringement: over 90% of downloads were infringing, the operators received a “constant stream of communications” from users who said they were downloading infringing works, thousands of linking sites associated with Hotfile contained terms like “pirate” or “warez” that indicated obvious infringement, and, perhaps most brazenly, Hotfile’s tutorials for using its service used names and titles of copyrighted works as examples.

But the court may not need to dive into the scope of “red flag” awareness just yet; the studios have also provided evidence that Hotfile had actual knowledge of specific infringing works.

Without the safe harbor, the studios argue that Hotfile is liable for contributory copyright infringement, vicarious liability, and inducement. These arguments are fairly straight-forward applications of these doctrines of secondary liability. For contributory infringement, Hotfile provided the “site and facilities” for infringement and had reason to know about such infringement. For vicarious liability, Hotfile financially benefited from infringement through its premium subscriptions while declining its ability to stop or limit infringment.

The inducement claim — ”active steps . . . taken to encourage direct infringement” — tracks the Supreme Court’s Grokster opinion and “parallels the pattern of prior adjudicated infringers,” according to the studios. They allege that Hotfile’s unlawful objective is apparent from its Affilliate program, which pays users to upload popular, and predictably copyrighted, files. Hotfile also directly targets a user base of infringers, refuses to terminate repeat infringers, is overwhelmingly used only for infringement, and depends on infringement for its business model. Finally, the defendants have helped users to infringe, have impeded efforts by copyright holders to mitigate infringement, and have refused to even consider technology that could be used to prevent infringement.

Hotfile’s response to the studios’ motion for summary judgment essentially refutes their characterization of the facts — it didn’t induce infringement, it did reasonably implement a repeat infringer policy, etc.⁴ To be sure, the court must sift through a lot of facts to resolve the issues raised on these motions. To succeed at the summary judgment stage, a party must show that, when all the facts are viewed in the light most favorable to the opposing party, no genuine issue of material facts exist, and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law on the issues it raises in its motion. With such complex legal issues, and thousands of pages of evidence already in front of it, the court here has its work cut out for it.

Other issues to watch

In the meantime, there are a few other legal issues raised in this litigation that are worth watching.

First, does inducement disqualify a service provider from DMCA safe harbor protection? A number of other courts have taken this position.⁵ The language and legislative history of the statute certainly seem to suggest that active conduct to encourage infringement is incompatible with a safe harbor for passive conduct, but courts in the Eleventh Circuit have yet to weigh in on the issue, as far as I can tell.

Next, what is the role of willful blindness in the knowledge prong of the DMCA safe harbor? The studios make the claim that Hotfile acted with willful blindness, effectively admitting “that they sought to blind themselves to the infringement all around them as much as possible.” Willful blindness, defined by the Supreme Court as taking “deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability of wrongdoing,” has long been considered a form of knowledge. The twist is that the DMCA provides that safe harbor protection does not require “a service provider monitoring its service or affirmatively seeking facts indicating infringing activity, except to the extent consistent with a standard technical measure complying with the provisions of subsection (i).” The Second Circuit in Viacom v. YouTube confronted this question and concluded that the DMCA “limits—but does not abrogate— the doctrine” of willful blindness, and it “may be applied, in appropriate circumstances, to demonstrate knowledge or awareness of specific instances of infringement under the DMCA.”

Finally, on a bit of a side note, the movie studios also argue that Hotfile is ineligible for the 512(c) safe harbor — which limits remedies “for infringement of copyright by reason of the storage at the direction of a user” — because Hotfile’s service was not used primarily for “storage.” They note that a significant portion of registered users on the site only use it to download, not upload, files. More to the point, Hotfile routinely deletes files that have never been downloaded — the “antithesis” of storage, as the studios put it. I don’t recall seeing this argument raised before in another case, so it will be interesting to see how the court approaches it.

A trial is currently scheduled for early November, but it shouldn’t be a surprise if the court’s eventual decision on these motions is appealed to the Eleventh Circuit, delaying trial.

Footnotes

The studios also seek to strike portions of testimony from several of Hotfile’s expert witnesses and defendant Anton Titov. [↩]
Once by Perfect10 and twice by Liberty Media Holdings. [↩]
Note that the 9th Circuit ordered more briefing in Veoh this past June, following the decision in Viacom. Thus, the decision may yet be amended; the court also has a petition for rehearing on the case pending. [↩]
Hotfile has also moved for partial summary judgment on the claim that it is protected by the DMCA safe harbor for any infringement that occurred after February 11, 2011 — ten days after it was sued by the studios. [↩]
See Viacom v YouTube, 676 F.3d 19, 38 (2nd Cir. 2012) (“inducement of copyright infringement … which ‘premises liability on purposeful, culpable expression and conduct,’ … might also rise to the level of control under § 512(c)(1)(B)”); Columbia Pictures v Fung, cv 06-5578-SVW, Order Granting Plaintiffs’ Motion for Summary Judgment on Liability (CD Cali. 2009) (“inducement liability and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act safe harbors are inherently contradictory”); Arista Records v Usenet.com, 633 F. Supp. 2d 124, 142 SDNY 2009 (if defendants “encouraged or fostered such infringement, they would be ineligible for the DMCA’s safe harbor provisions”). [↩]

Posted in: Copyright news · 1 comment

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Flava Works v Gunter: Does Embedded Video Infringe?

April 30, 2012 · Terry Hart · 5 comments

A relatively unknown copyright infringement case is starting to attract more attention.

In October 2010, self-described “gay ethnic adult company” Flava Works sued Marques Rondale Gunter, who owns and operates myVidster, a “social video bookmarking” site for copyright and trademark infringement. Now the case is in front of the Seventh Circuit, and it has attracted amicus briefs from heavyweights like the MPAA, Google and Facebook, and perennial amici Public Knowledge and the EFF.

While the appeal raises several important issues, it is one in particular that has attracted much of the attention online. Can embedding a video infringe on copyright?

Flava Works in the Lower Court

Last May, the Northern District Court of Illinois ruled on Gunter’s motion to dismiss the complaint. The court dismissed all the claims except the contributory copyright infringement claim. It found that Flava Works had plead sufficient knowledge. Said the court, “The knowledge element for contributory copyright infringement is met in those cases where a party has been notified of specific infringing uses of its technology and fails to act to prevent future such infringing uses, or willfully blinds itself to such infringing uses.” myVidster’s receipt of multiple DMCA takedown notices involving the same files and users triggered a duty for it to take steps to prevent future infringing uses.

Later that summer, the Illinois court granted Flava Works request for a preliminary injunction against Gunter, concluding that it was likely to succeed on the merits of its claim of contributory copyright infringement.¹ Notably, it rejected Gunter’s contention that the site was protected by the DMCA’s safe harbor. It primarily based this decision on the site’s lack of a repeat infringer policy — one of the prerequisites for safe harbor protection — and this decision seemed an easy one. Said the court, “It is difficult for us to understand how defendants can argue with a straight face that they have adopted and reasonably implemented a ‘repeat infringer’ policy.”

Gunter moved for a reconsideration of the preliminary injunction, which the court denied. The court explained, “The vast majority of myVidster users have not created backup copies of videos on the site, but have directed myVidster to “embed” video clips on the site through the posting/bookmarking process. It is this action, to which defendants also refer as “inline linking,” that is the focus of the instant motion to reconsider.” Gunter argued that the Ninth Circuit’s holding in Perfect 10 v. Amazon should compel a different result.

In Perfect 10, the Court was faced with the question of whether Google’s image search, which used in-line linking to display full-size images from other sites in its results, directly infringed the plaintiff’s display right. After interpreting the Copyright Act’s language, the Ninth Circuit adopted what the District Court called the “server test” — infringement of the display right is only possible when the image resides on the web site’s own servers, not when the image is only displayed in-line but resides on another web site’s computers.

Flava Works disagreed with Perfect 10:

We decline to apply Perfect 10 to this case. The Ninth Circuit’s decision is not binding on this court; moreover, it is highly fact-specific and distinguishable. Defendants assert that the cases involve “essentially the same technology.” Both cases may involve inline linking, but the processes are quite different. The relevant comparison is between the conduct of Google and the conduct of myVidster’s users, not between Google and myVidster. In response to a search query, Google’s image search engine uses an automated process to display search results through inline linking. In contrast, myVidster’s users do not employ any sort of automation to determine which videos they bookmark; rather, they personally select and submit videos for inline linking/embedding on myVidster. (And many of those hand-picked videos are infringing.) Google’s use of inline linking is neutral to the content of the images; that of myVidster’s users is not.

To the extent that Perfect 10 can be read to stand for the proposition that inline linking can never cause a display of images or videos that would give rise to a claim of direct copyright infringement, we respectfully disagree. In our view, a website’s servers need not actually store a copy of a work in order to “display” it. The fact that the majority of the videos displayed on myVidster reside on a third-party server does not mean that myVidster users are not causing a “display” to be made by bookmarking those videos. The display of a video on myVidster can be initiated by going to a myVidster URL and clicking “play”; that is the point of bookmarking videos on myVidster—a user can navigate to a collection of myVidster videos and does not have to go to each separate source site to view them.

Gunter persisted and appealed Flava Works to the Seventh Circuit.

Can Embedding Infringe Copyright?

One of the major issues in the appeal — and the one that has attracted the attention of Google, Facebook, and the MPAA — is whether embedding videos violates a copyright owner’s public performance right. Secondary liability requires direct infringement, and the parties dispute the lower court’s conclusion that myVidster’s users, who add such embedded links to the myVidster site, are direct infringers.

Gunter, and amici Facebook and Google, urge the Seventh Circuit to adopt the Ninth Circuit’s “server test.” As noted above, the Ninth Circuit interpreted the Copyright Act to limit liability for public display of a copyrighted work to only those online users who actually copy the work onto their own server.

Flava Works, joined by the MPAA as amicus, argue in support of the lower court’s decision.

Gunter is facing an uphill battle here. As the lower court noted, the Ninth Circuit’s decision isn’t binding on the Seventh. And while the “server test” has been received favorably by some academics and service providers, it has apparently not been endorsed by any other court outside the Circuit. And, the “server test” is not found in the text of the Copyright Act or suggested by the legislative history.

There’s another problem for Gunter. Perfect 10 dealt solely with the public display right in copyright, while here the court is dealing with both the right to publicly display and publicly perform a work. The Ninth Circuit’s adoption of the “server test” was premised on the language of the Copyright Act’s definition for “display”:

To “display” a work means to show a copy of it, either directly or by means of a film, slide, television image, or any other device or process or, in the case of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to show individual images nonsequentially.

The court seized on the definition’s inclusion of the word “copy” to support its conclusion. However, the Act’s definition of “performance” doesn’t refer to copies:

To perform or display a work “publicly” means—

(1) to perform or display it at a place open to the public or at any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered; or

2) to transmit or otherwise communicate a performance or display of the work to a place specified by clause (1) or to the public, by means of any device or process, whether the members of the public capable of receiving the performance or display receive it in the same place or in separate places and at the same time or at different times.

On a side note, this definition makes sense. When a theater performs a dramatic play, or a band performs a musical composition, it doesn’t generally have a “copy” of the work, but such a performance is still within the exclusive rights of the copyright owner.

But more to the point, even if the Ninth Circuit’s “server test” were adopted by the Seventh Circuit, it doesn’t follow, from the language of the definitions, that it should be applicable to the public performance right.

It’s my opinion that embedding a video can be considered a public performance (I’ve touched on this issue before in relation to last summer’s Commercial Felony Streaming Act). In fact, I was somewhat surprised in researching to discover that the issue doesn’t seem to have come in front of a court until now. But others have concluded the same — here’s an article from 2007 quoting This Week in Law’s Denise Howell saying as much.

And, despite some of the hyperbole² that has resulted from Flava Work’s position on embedded links, I don’t believe a decision affirming the lower court would result in much of a change for occasional users of embedded links — like, say, bloggers or forum operators. These users have always had the benefit of the DMCA safe harbors for any unintentional infringement that might stem from embedding a video, as well as the fair use defense in appropriate circumstances.

Is Linking ever Infringement?

Part of the negative response to this case seems to stem from an idea that linking can never give rise to liability for infringement — this is, in fact, one of the arguments Google and Facebook make in their joint amicus brief.³ But such a bright line rule has never existed.

Congress certainly hasn’t held this view. In the legislative history for the DMCA, you can find evidence that Congress believed linking can, in some cases, be infringing. The House Commerce Committee explained that the “red flag” knowledge standard in the bill was intended “to exclude from the safe harbor sophisticated ‘‘pirate’’ directories—which refer Internet users to other selected Internet sites where pirate software, books, movies, and music can be downloaded or transmitted.” And the safe harbor for information location services itself (17 USC § 512(d)) expressly shields service providers against liability “for infringement of copyright by reason of the provider referring or linking users to an online location containing infringing material or infringing activity, by using information location tools, including a directory, index, reference, pointer, or hypertext link.”

And, despite its legal arguments, Google itself recognizes that linking can infringe copyright. In its AdWords copyright policy, Google states that “Software or sites that enable streaming, copying, or downloading of movies, music, television programs, games, or software” are not allowed — and such sites include “Link aggregation sites primarily aimed at enabling the download or streaming of music, movies, or other media.”

Footnotes

Note that the District Court followed the traditional standard for copyright infringement injunctions, where a likelihood of success on the merits creates a presumption in favor of an injunction. This is in contrast to the Second and Ninth Circuits, which extended the Supreme Court’s holding in eBay v. MercExchange that no such presumption exists for patent injunctions to copyright infringement cases. Gunter has appealed this point along with the others discussed here, and while it is an interesting and important issue, it is beyond the scope of today’s article. [↩]
According to the site linked above: “If the MPAA is successful and the decision is upheld, this could have far reaching, and dire, consequences for Internet users of all stripes; the ruling would seem to include even the idea of linking back to the host-site instead of embedding, essentially rendering a critical part of online culture illegal. It would, much like ACTA, accomplish a large part of what SOPA and PIPA sought to do without actually requiring the pesky consent of the governed that otherwise is at the heart of American law.” [↩]
The court and parties to this case use the term “linking” to refer both to hyperlinking — where a web site’s text can be clicked to go to another web site — and embedded linking — where an image or video on another server is displayed as though it is part of a web site. Under the hood, both are acheived in much the same way, though each offers a different type of experience to the user. [↩]

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Guest Post: Yes, Google, You Have To Delist Rogue Sites

April 02, 2012 · Devlin Hartline · 11 comments

Today’s guest post comes from Devlin Hartline, a J.D. candidate at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law with an expected graduation date of May, 2012. His primary interests are in copyright, internet, and constitutional law. He lives with his wife and two young sons in Metairie, Louisiana. You can follow him on Twitter: @devlinhartline.

Introduction

Apparently, Google thinks it should be above the law. It hasn’t explicitly said so, of course, but that’s my takeaway from its protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act this past January. Specifically, Google thinks that it should be allowed to list rogue sites in its search results without any court having the power to order it to stop. Google’s position strikes me as self-contradictory. On the one hand it says that Congress is “trying to do the right thing by going after pirates and counterfeiters.” On the other hand it says that search engines shouldn’t “be forced to delete entire websites from their search results.” What Google glosses over is the fact that search engines like itself are part of the problem—search engines drive traffic to rogue sites by listing them in their search results. This is why courts already order search engines to delist rogue sites.

The day before the protests, Google provided a written statement to the Huffington Post announcing that it’d be joining the grumblers: “we oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking American companies to censor the Internet.” Sure enough, the next day Google blacked-out the logo on its home page. When users clicked on the self-censored insignia, they were taken to an information page, “End Piracy, Not Liberty.” From there, a tab led to another page, “More about SOPA and PIPA,” where Google sketched out the reasons behind its opposition. Google’s three main gripes with the bills can be boiled down thusly: (1) it’s censorship, (2) it’ll hurt innovation, and (3) it’s futile. Noticeably absent from this explanation is any acknowledgement that search engines meaningfully contribute to online infringement.

I can’t help but feel cynical. The same Google that unilaterally delisted over 11 million websites from its search results because they were too “spammy and low-quality” thinks it’s wrong that a court should order it to delist even one single site that has been determined to be dedicated to infringement. The same Google that forfeited $500 million to the United States government after it got caught assisting foreign pharmacies in importing illegal drugs thinks it’s OK to assist foreign rogue sites in the commission of online piracy. If Google really thinks that preventing piracy is such a good thing, then why does it want to help rogue sites out by linking to them? As with many things, I think the answer is money—it costs real money to comply with a court order to delist a rogue site. The question is whether any of this should actually be Google’s problem. I think that clearly the answer is, “yes.”

“I Come From Cyberspace”

In his iconic “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” Grateful Dead lyricist, EFF cofounder, and cyberlibertarian John Perry Barlow threw down the gauntlet on behalf of cyberspace:

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather. . . . I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear. . . . Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. . . . Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.

Barlow’s quaint and utopian, if not anarchic, vision of cyberspace as existing somewhere untouchable by the “Governments of the Industrial World” never was. Nor would it ever come to be. In fact, in an ironic twist of fate, the “would-be Cyber-Jefferson” Barlow delivered his Declaration on the same day that President Clinton signed the internet-regulating Communications Decency Act into law.¹ While cyberspace as a metaphorical place does not lie within any actual borders (and what metaphor ever does?), the same cannot be said for the people that make cyberspace possible—the so-called intermediaries. According to Black’s Law Dictionary (9th ed. 2009), an “intermediary” is “a mediator or go-between; a third-party negotiator.” An intermediary, then, is just a middleman. Cyberspace may be “everywhere and nowhere,” but the intermediaries all dwell in this world of “flesh and steel,” anything but “independent of the tyrannies.”

For netizens, cyberspace’s intermediaries take on familiar forms such as internet service providers, payment processors, content hosts, search engines, and advertising networks. Use of intermediaries in mass communications is nothing new; yesterday’s switchboard is today’s network switch. Without intermediaries, mass communication platforms such as the internet wouldn’t exist. The internet, after all, is just a global network of interconnected intermediaries who host, transport, and organize our data. And given their “essential role in facilitating online communication, intermediaries often are capable of exercising authority over wrongdoers who are otherwise unreachable” for a variety of reasons.² Instead of circumventing the middlemen, the digital revolution has simply replaced one set of intermediaries with another. The internet’s decentralized structure has, by design, engendered the proliferation of a new set of intermediaries.

There’s no doubt that intermediaries like Google make infringement on the internet possible, for without the intermediaries there’d be no internet to infringe on in the first place. The difficult question then is which intermediaries, if any, should be held responsible for the infringement they help make possible. Should a search engine like Google be liable for infringement that takes place on the rogue sites it links to in its search results?

Common Law Secondary Liability

Copyright infringement is a tort, or a civil wrong. The Copyright Act, in § 106, provides that “the owner of copyright . . . has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize” certain enumerated acts, including making copies, preparing derivative works, and distributing copies. § 501(a) of the Act provides that “[a]nyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner . . . is an infringer of the copyright.” Thus, only the copyright owner has the right, say, to make copies or to authorize the making of copies, and anyone else who does so is liable for infringement.

Direct copyright infringement occurs when someone, called the primary or direct infringer, is held liable for their own infringing acts. If I unlawfully make copies of your copyrighted work, I’m a primary infringer. Indirect copyright infringement, on the other hand, occurs when someone else, called the secondary or indirect infringer, is held liable as well. If someone else unlawfully authorizes me to make copies of your copyrighted work and I do so, I’m a primary infringer and the party that gave me authorization is a secondary infringer. Even though that other party didn’t personally make the copy (only I did), the law holds them responsible because they played a significant part in my unlawful copying.

The idea of placing liability on someone other than the primary infringer is what’s referred to as secondary liability in copyright law. It’s called other things too, like intermediary liability, indirect liability, third-party liability, or derivative liability. Whatever it’s called, the basic notion is the same: If someone else helps me to infringe, by, say, inciting or facilitating my infringement, then that someone else will be liable for my infringement since they helped to bring it about. The idea of holding responsible those who help others commit unlawful acts is not unique to copyright law. Perhaps more familiar are the similar concepts of accomplice or accessory liabilities in criminal law. If I help you plan a robbery or act as your lookout while you rob a bank, I’m liable because I helped you commit your crime. By making it unlawful to help others commit unlawful acts, we deter people from doing so.

The Copyright Act itself does not expressly provide for secondary liability for infringement. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court has noted that the “absence of such express language in the copyright statute does not preclude the imposition of liability for copyright infringements on certain parties who have not themselves engaged in the infringing activity.”³ Indeed, secondary liability concepts in copyright law have been developed over time through judge-made, common law. “Courts have long recognized . . . that one may be held liable for the infringing acts of another.”⁴ Two distinct branches of secondary liability have been developed: “vicarious liability (grounded in the tort concept of respondeat superior) and contributory infringement (founded on the tort concept of enterprise liability).”⁵

While it’s true that the Copyright Act doesn’t explicitly refer to secondary liability in so many words, § 106’s grant of the exclusive right “to authorize” in fact indicates Congress’s endorsement of court-developed contributory liability principles. The relevant House Report explains: “Use of the phrase ‘to authorize’ is intended to avoid any questions as to the liability of contributory infringers.”⁶ This comes as no surprise, since, as the Supreme Court noted over a century ago, contributory liability is a principle “recognized in every part of the law.”⁷ The Second Circuit’s formulation of contributory liability is oft-quoted: “one who, with knowledge of the infringing activity, induces, causes or materially contributes to the infringing conduct of another, may be held liable as a ‘contributory’ infringer.”⁸ Thus, liability for contributory infringement turns on two elements: (1) knowledge, and (2) inducement, causation, or material contribution. So where does Google’s search engine fall within this rubric?

Google’s Secondary Liability

Conveniently enough, the Ninth Circuit addressed this very point at length in Perfect 10 v. Amazon.com.⁹ There, plaintiff Perfect 10 argued that defendant Google was secondarily liable for infringement occurring on third-party websites because Google provided links to these sites in its search results. The circuit court started its analysis by noting that contributory liability is examined in light of the “rules of fault-based liability derived from the common law,” a principle of which is that intent may be imputed: “Tort law ordinarily imputes to an actor the intention to cause the natural and probable consequences of his conduct.”¹⁰ Thus, since its intent to encourage direct infringement may be imputed, an actor (like Google) may be liable for contributory infringement if it knowingly takes actions (like linking) that are substantially certain to result in direct infringement by others.

The court of appeals then looked to two cases, Napster¹¹ and Netcom,¹² for the application of these principles in cyberspace. In Napster, the Ninth Circuit stated that “if a computer system operator learns of specific infringing material available on his system and fails to purge such material from the system, the operator knows of and contributes to direct infringement.”¹³ Similarly, the district court in Netcom held that if an internet service provider knows or has reason to know that material on its system is infringing and fails to remove it, then it is liable for contributory infringement since its failure constitutes substantial participation in the resulting infringement.¹⁴ Both cases stand for the proposition that a “service provider’s knowing failure to prevent infringing actions” can be the “basis for imposing contributory liability” since intent to cause the natural result of its conduct may be imputed.¹⁵

The Ninth Circuit noted that a central theme of Napster and Netcom is the fact that online services have the ability to drastically amplify the effects of infringing activities. As the Supreme Court noted in Grokster,¹⁶ when a service enables individuals to commit infringement on a large scale, the argument for imposing indirect liability on that service is particularly powerful. The court of appeals observed that when a service is used widely to infringe, it is simply not possible for a copyright owner to enforce its rights against all of the direct infringers. Sometimes “the only practical alternative” is “to go against the distributor of the copying device for secondary liability on a theory of contributory or vicarious infringement.”¹⁷ Accordingly, the circuit court held that “a computer system operator can be held contributorily liable if it has actual knowledge that specific infringing material is available using its system and can take simple measures to prevent further damage to copyrighted works yet continues to provide access to infringing works.”¹⁸

The Ninth Circuit then turned its sights on Google: “There is no dispute that Google substantially assists websites to distribute their infringing copies to a worldwide market and assists a worldwide audience of users to access infringing materials.”¹⁹ Thus, the court of appeals held that Google could be liable as a contributory infringer if it: (1) knew that infringing materials were available using its search engine, (2) could take simple measures to remove the links, and (3) failed to do so.

The Ninth Circuit’s opinion comports with the DMCA safe harbor provisions. Under § 512(d) of the Copyright Act, a search engine such as Google is significantly shielded from liability for infringement that occurs via links it provides so long as the links are quickly removed or disabled when the search engine becomes aware that they lead to infringing material or activity. Thus, the DMCA seeks to encourage the delisting of rogue sites from search results by giving search engines safe harbor if they remove links when presented with proper takedown notices (which are deemed as a matter of law to impart knowledge of infringement). This embodies Congress’s judgment that it’s generally a bad thing for search engines to provide links to rogue sites. According to both Congress and the courts, search engines that knowingly link to rogue sites are opening themselves up to secondary liability for the infringement they help bring about. And given that “Google is ranked #1 in the world” according to Alexa’s traffic rankings, its contribution to the problem of online infringement is all the more impossible to deny.

Censorship, Innovation, And Futility

When the argument is properly framed as whether Google should be allowed to substantially assist worldwide infringement via its search engine, its counterarguments about censorship, innovation, and futility fall apart. Google complains that “search engines could be forced to delete entire websites from their search results.” There’s no doubt that under some broad definition of the word, a court ordering Google to delist a rogue site is censorship. But so what? All law enforcement efforts are censorship on some level. The whole point is to censor—that is, to stop—the party that’s unjustifiably causing harm. Google can be forced to “delete entire websites” from its search results because those links are significantly contributing to whatever infringing material or activity they point to. What’s being censored is Google’s excessive role in the problem of online piracy. If Google really thinks that pursuing piracy is a lofty goal, you’d think it’d want to remove its own links to these rogue sites.

Google’s complaint about innovation is equally vapid. It starts with the curious assertion that “internet companies would have to monitor everything users link to or upload or face the risk of time-consuming litigation.” This is simply not so. It is fundamental to secondary liability doctrine that intermediaries “do not take on an affirmative duty to act or to prevent tortious or illegal conduct, but only a duty not to facilitate known wrongdoing.”²⁰ Google has no duty to monitor the links it provides in its search results, and nothing in the Stop Online Piracy Act or the PROTECT IP Act would establish such a duty—in fact both bills explicitly say there’s no affirmative duty to monitor. Google also points to letters from internet companies, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurs making vague arguments about how the bills would stifle innovation generally. But innovators like Google are not exempt from the law, and it’s hard to see how complying with court orders is unduly burdensome for a company like Google that already has such mechanisms in place. Google’s service creates a harm to innocent third parties that is significant enough to warrant holding it responsible for that harm. It’s disingenuous for Google to complain about the cost of eliminating a harm that Google itself is creating.

Google’s final argument is that “SOPA and PIPA won’t even work” since rogue sites will just relocate. Instead, it argues that “Congress should consider alternatives like the OPEN Act” that take a follow-the-money approach. This argument is clearly self-serving. All of the bills (SOPA, PROTECT IP Act, and OPEN Act) target the money supplies of rogue sites. If targeting the money supply is by itself effective, then why does adding the requirement that search engines also delist rogue sites suddenly make the whole thing not work? That makes no sense. Google’s support of the OPEN Act is better explained by the fact that the Act contains no provisions dictating that search engines must delist rogue sites. In other words, the OPEN Act doesn’t make Google responsible for the harm that it chooses to create (and, I assume, to profit from). How very convenient. Google’s complaint here is not about the futility of the bills—it’s about Google’s bottom line. And that’s what all of this hoopla has been about all along, if you ask me.

Follow me on Twitter: @devlinhartline

Footnotes

Alex Kozinski & Josh Goldfoot, A Declaration of the Dependence of Cyberspace, 32 Colum. J.L. & Arts 365 (2009). [↩]
David S. Ardia, Free Speech Savior or Shield for Scoundrels: An Empirical Study of Intermediary Immunity Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, 43 Loy. L.A. L. Rev. 373, 378-79 (2010). [↩]
Sony Corp. of Am. v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417, 434 (1984). [↩]
Demetriades v. Kaufmann, 690 F.Supp. 289, 292 (S.D.N.Y. 1988). [↩]
Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). [↩]
H.R. Rep. No. 94-1478 at 61; the House Report also endorses common law vicarious infringement, id. at 159-60 (“a person who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner is an infringer, including persons who can be considered related or vicarious infringers. . . . The committee has decided that no justification exists for changing the existing law . . . .”). [↩]
Kalem Co. v. Harper Bros., 222 U.S. 55, 63 (1911). [↩]
Gershwin Pub. Corp. v. Columbia Artists Mgmt., Inc., 443 F.2d 1159, 1162 (2d Cir. 1971). [↩]
Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., 508 F.3d 1146 (9th Cir. 2007). [↩]
Id. at 1171 (internal quotations and citations omitted). [↩]
A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc., 239 F.3d 1004 (9th Cir. 2001). [↩]
Religious Tech. Ctr. v. Netcom On-Line Commc’n Services, Inc., 907 F.Supp. 1361 (N.D. Cal. 1995). [↩]
Perfect 10, 508 F.3d at 1171 (internal quotations omitted). [↩]
Id. at 1171-72. [↩]
Id. at 1172. [↩]
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., 545 U.S. 913 (2005). [↩]
Perfect 10, 508 F.3d at 1172. [↩]
Id. (internal quotations and citations omitted). [↩]
Id. [↩]
David S. Ardia, Free Speech Savior or Shield for Scoundrels: An Empirical Study of Intermediary Immunity Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, 43 Loy. L.A. L. Rev. 373, 505 (2010). [↩]

Posted in: Secondary liability · 11 comments

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Friday’s Endnotes – 03/02/12

March 02, 2012 · Terry Hart · 4 comments

And we’re back.

Posting has been sparse in the past couple of weeks as I focused on preparing for the bar exam, but with that behind me, I can now turn my attention back to the blog. Today will be a super-sized collection of links as I continue to catch up with many of the recent developments in copyright law. Enjoy!

Tinseltown, Ghost Town — A sobering op-ed from the NY Times on how the economic downturn has hit the film industry. “Her eviction follows that of our mutual neighbors, actors on a well-known soap opera forced out of their house in a foreclosure in a driving rainstorm four days before Christmas. Their dark, vacant houses, emblazoned with the public notices taped in the windows like shameful scarlet A’s, are holes in the hidden, fraying social fabric of Hollywood, where a vast majority belong not to the 1 percent but to the 99.”

Patience and piracy: Why helping yourself hurts good TV — Todd VanDerWerff, writing at the Onion AV Club, delves into the recent Oatmeal comic on piracy. Highly recommended. Says VanDerWerff, “I came into this piece with the idea that there was an easy answer here: Be more patient. The Internet has created a largely immature desire to have everything you’ve ever wanted now, and if it’s not available now, well, who cares about the companies who funded that entertainment in the first place? For the most part, I find this sort of behavior—and the self-righteous chest-thumping that too often goes along with it—distasteful.”

Comments, Questions, Concerns: RIAA CEO Reflects On Responses To His New York Times Op-Ed — The RIAA’s Cary Sherman provides a thoughtful response to those who volunteered their thoughts on his article in the NY Times earlier this month. “Skepticism is a healthy and useful thing. It is good to question. But that posture should apply universally to all sources of information. The technology companies that turned their platforms into engines of advocacy did so because it was in their business interests. I don’t have a problem with them looking out for their economic interests, but technology companies have an obligation to make sure that readers and users get straight facts and understand that this is about business, not idealistic values.”

Piracy is not competition — When brick-and-mortar bookstores complain about the threat they face from Amazon.com, they are complaining that customers will leave them for a superior alternative; when Hollywood complains about piracy, they are complaining that customers have left them for an illegal alternative. They have stopped paying for Hollywood products yet are still consuming them. These are not even remotely similar situations — morally, legally, or economically.”

Hadopi Becomes un Ballon de Football Politique — Bill Rosenblatt takes a look at some of the recent statistics concerning France’s graduated response program and offers some comments on the politics of copyright debates. “Like it or not,” he notes, “the Hadopi system seems to be working so far.” “Let Hadopi-haters do their own serious quantitative studies, and let’s compare the results. Let’s make the judgments on facts, and for God’s sake let’s not let political posturing pollute the atmosphere.”

Keeping the Pirate Bays at Bay — Barry Sookman offers his usual stellar insights into a current UK High Court case where record labels are seeking ISP blocking orders against the notorious Pirate Bay. “Based on previous jurisprudence in the UK and elsewhere in the EU,” says Sookman, “it seems very likely that the UK High Court will make an order blocking or impeding access to The Pirate Bay.”

Copyright, piracy and when fans need to stop circulating the tapes — The Whine Seller’s Hillary DePiano ponders the challenges created by the ease of piracy and difficulty of creating legitimate online outlets. Obviously, content creators want to make it as easy and convenient for consumers to access their works, yet pirates have a clear advantage when they don’t have to worry about pesky details like licensing or the costs of producing content.

The end of two free culture myths — John Degen highlights recent comments by Canadian attorney James Gannon in front of the Bill C-11 Committee of Parliament. The myths? Number 1: “Only old, incumbent players advocate for strong copyright protection. The new generation doesn’t bother with copyright.” And number 2: “Those advocating strong copyright protection just don’t understand new technology.”

The Relationship Between the ISP Safe Harbors and the Ordinary Rules of Copyright Liability[PDF] — An informative academic introduction to how ordinary principles of direct and secondary copyright liability have interacted with the DMCA safe harbors since their introduction, by IP lawyer and professor R. Anthony Reese. “The safe harbors may be more valuable than they initially appear for OSPs facing secondary liability claims, and less valuable than they initially appear for OSPs facing direct infringement claims.”

Cord Cutting Can Wait: Subscription TV Added 343,000 Subs in Q4 — Reports PaidContent, “The nation’s top cable, satellite and telco TV service providers grew their customer base sharply in the last quarter of 2011, reversing several years of steep decline. … So what’s happening here? Did the cord-cutting movement stall out? Hardly—it was the bad economy all along.”

Celebrating Independent Film at the DC IFF Hill Summit — The Copyright Alliance reports on a recent panel discussion at the DC Independent Film Festival Summit on the Hill. Congressman Brad Sherman gave a keynote on the importance of copyright protection for independent filmmakers, followed by the panel discussion on online video sharing and piracy.

Business Matters: When is it Safe to Say Google Music Has Failed? — Glenn Peoples at Billboard says: “Google’s giant footprint was to give Google Music unparalleled access to music lovers. But according to a report by CNET’s Greg Sandoval, Google Music has disappointed industry executives in its 3 short months of existence.”

Author discovers that Amazon can reprice his indie Kindle books however they want and cut his royalties, at will — Meet the new boss. “Hines points out that when his traditional publisher and its bookseller partners decide to offer his work at sale prices, he still gets paid royalties based on the cover price, and discusses the difficulties he faces in lacking the clout of an agent or a major publisher in negotiating with Amazon over this practice.”

The Fallacy Of Music Like Water — A thoughtful guest post from Portland songwriter and producer Gavin Castleton. Castleton points out that “proponents of the Music Like Water concept have put far more thought into making everything free to the consumer than they have into making sure people can find what they want, and in order for artists and consumers to have a better experience with music, distribution and filtering have to be lockstep.”

Scroogle: Dear Google, we’re not bots, we’re HUMAN — Why is Google so intent on creating artificial scarcity for its search results?

Upcoming Supreme Court Case May Be Key To Holding Spy Tech Companies Responsible For Human Rights Violations — The EFF argues that the US should hold technology companies liable for what their users do with their products.

Posted in: Friday's Endnotes · 4 comments

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SOPA: New remedies for existing liability

November 14, 2011 · Terry Hart · 17 comments

That every person for every injury done him in his goods, land or person, ought to have remedy by the course of the law of the land and ought to have justice and right for the injury done to him freely without sale, fully without any denial, and speedily without delay, according to the law of the land.¹

Ineffective remedies are often just as bad as no remedy at all. While innovative, sustainable services continue to develop, offering consumers exciting and convenient new ways to enjoy content that remunerates creators, rogue actors still find it easy to profit off the misappropriation of someone else’s time and talents.

The Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261) gives creators more tools to address this type of commercial piracy. Since it was introduced, however, it has been subject to much criticism, and with the House Judiciary Committee holding a hearing on the bill Wednesday, the criticism is sure to continue.

While some of the criticism is legitimate — few bills are perfect when they are first introduced, hence the need for hearings — a lot of it is unfounded. One thing that should be kept in mind is that SOPA does not expand the scope of copyright law, of what is protected or what is not.

The Stop Online Piracy Act creates new remedies, it does not create any new liability.

Section 103 of SOPA provides for a procedure, similar to the notice-and-takedown procedure of the DMCA, that allows copyright holders to better protect their work against commercial misappropriation. This procedure is limited to use against sites that are, as the bill terms them, “dedicated to theft of U.S. property.” The bill includes three separate definitions for a site “dedicated to theft of U.S. property.”

To see why SOPA doesn’t expand the scope of copyright law, compare its definitions to current law. These definitions, for sites “dedicated to the theft of U.S. property”, incorporate existing standards of liability. That is, sites or services that fall within the scope of these definitions are already potentially liable for copyright infringement. All Section 103 of SOPA does is give copyright holders a new tool to more effectively protect their work from commercial misappropriation.

No legitimate purpose

The first definition of a site “dedicated to the theft of U.S. property” under SOPA is one that “is primarily designed or operated for the purpose of, has only limited purpose or use other than, or is marketed by its operator or another acting in concert with that operator for use in, offering goods or services in a manner that engages in, enables, or facilitates” copyright infringement.

The language of this definition mirrors that of the existing provision in the DMCA that prohibits devices that circumvent technological protection measures:

No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that—

(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;

(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or

(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person’s knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.²

But in a broader sense, this definition draws upon the theory of liability originally set forth in Sony Corporation v. Universal City Studios — the “Betamax” case. There, the Supreme Court held that the sale of a good “does not constitute contributory infringement if the product is widely used for legitimate, unobjectionable purposes. Indeed, it need merely be capable of substantial noninfringing uses.” This holding borrowed from the staple article of commerce doctrine in patent law. A corollary to this doctrine is that “where an article is ‘good for nothing else’ but infringement … there is no injustice in presuming or imputing an intent to infringe.”³

There is recognition in Sony itself that its holding on contributory infringement doesn’t extend to products or services which have no purpose other than infringement. Justice Blackmun said in his dissent, “If virtually all of the product’s use, however, is to infringe, contributory liability may be imposed; if no one would buy the product for noninfringing purposes alone, it is clear that the manufacturer is purposely profiting from the infringement, and that liability is appropriately imposed.” Blackmun’s dissent bore a strong resemblance to an earlier draft of what, at one point, was the majority opinion in Sony.⁴ The language of that draft bears an even stronger resemblance to SOPA’s definition of a site “dedicated to theft of U.S. property”: “Sony can be liable for contributory infringement only if the Betamax’s ‘most conspicuous purpose’ or ‘primary use’ is an infringing use.”⁵

Willful Blindness

Willful blindness is sometimes also referred to as “Nelsonian knowledge“, after flag office Horatio Nelson, who fought for the British Royal Navy in the late 1700s and early 1800s. The following story explains why — this particular story also serves as the origin of the phrase “turning a blind eye.”

When some of your great grandfathers were little boys, there was a great war between England and France. Many of the battles were fought at sea. England had good ships and brave sailors and bold captains in plenty; but the best sailor and the boldest captain of them all was Lord Horatio Nelson.

[…] In one battle this brave officer lost an eye. In another he lost an arm; but though he had but one eye and one arm, he was always the first in the fight and the last out. He never would give in. At the battle of Copenhagen two of his ships ran aground. Admiral Parker, who had command of the fleet, thought Nelson had no chance of winning: so he hung out the signal to “stop fighting.”

But Nelson took no heed of it. His one eye danced with glee as the guns roared, and ropes and bits of timber flew through the air. When a shot struck the mast of his own ship and broke it to hits, he only said. “Warm work this! But I wouldn’t lie out of it for all the world!” Some one told him that the signal was up to “stop fighting.”

He laughed: and putting the glass to his blind eye, he said: “I don’t see the signal. Keep mine flying for closer battle. Nail it to the mast.” And he kept on fighting till he won the battle; and for his great victory he was made lord admiral of the fleet.⁶

The second definition of a site “dedicated to theft of U.S. property” under SOPA is a site where “the operator of the U.S.-directed site is taking, or has taken, deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability of the use of the U.S.-directed site to carry out acts that constitute” copyright infringement.

The language is taken directly — word for word — from last May’s Supreme Court opinion for Global-Tech Appliances v. SEB. The Court stated that “a willfully blind defendant is one who takes deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability of wrongdoing.”

Global-Tech presented the Court with the question of whether willful blindness can satisfy the knowledge requirement of 35 U.S.C. § 271. However, willful blindness itself is an incontrovertible part of the law. The Court explains:

The doctrine of willful blindness is well established in criminal law. Many criminal statutes require proof that a defendant acted knowingly or willfully, and courts applying the doctrine of willful blindness hold that defendants cannot escape the reach of these statutes by deliberately shielding themselves from clear evidence of critical facts that are strongly suggested by the circumstances. The traditional rationale for this doctrine is that defendants who behave in this manner are just as culpable as those who have actual knowledge. It is also said that persons who know enough to blind themselves to direct proof of critical facts in effect have actual knowledge of those facts.

The Court notes the wide acceptance of the concept of willful blindness. It begins its survey with a case from 1899 which embraced the idea and traces the doctrine through the 20th century. Today, “every Court of Appeals—with the possible exception of the District of Columbia Circuit, has fully embraced willful blindness, applying the doctrine to a wide range of criminal statutes.”

Finally, the Supreme Court presents a general formulation of willful blindness. “While the Courts of Appeals articulate the doctrine of willful blindness in slightly different ways, all appear to agree on two basic requirements: (1) the defendant must subjectively believe that there is a high probability that a fact exists and (2) the defendant must take deliberate actions to avoid learning of that fact.”

The doctrine of willful blindness applies to copyright law just as much as it does to law in general.⁷

Inducement

The final definition of a site “dedicated to theft of US property” under SOPA is a site operated “with the object of promoting, or has promoted, its use to carry out acts that constitute” copyright infringement, ”as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement.”

Like the definition for willful blindness, this definition is taken directly from the Supreme Court. In Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer v. Grokster, the Court stated that “one who 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, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties.”

The Court dubs this “inducement”, and it has been recognized as a form of secondary liability within copyright law for decades. In 1971, for example, the Second Circuit said that “one who, with knowledge of the infringing activity induces, causes or materially contributes to the infringing conduct of another, may be held liable as a ‘contributory’ infringer.”⁸

Effective recourse

The Stop Online Piracy Act incorporates long standing principles of liability, principles that have applied to service providers and web site operators since the beginnings of the world wide web. The actions that would subject a provider to SOPA’s provisions are the same ones that would subject it to a copyright infringement suit under existing law and are actions that would not be protected under DMCA safe harbors.

What has been missing has been effective remedies against operators and providers that clearly fall within the scope of this liability: sites that have been purposely designed for the sole purpose of infringement, sites whose operators have taken deliberate steps to blind themselves from the use of their sites to engage in wrongdoing, and sites whose operators have actively promoted the use of their sites for piracy. For smaller content producers and individuals especially, this lack of effective recourse has proven damaging.

The goal of SOPA is to remedy this lack of effective recourse, and ensure that creators have “justice and right” freely, fully, and without delay for the injury caused by rogue sites.

Footnotes

Chief Justice Thomas Philips, The Constitutional Right to a Remedy, 78 New York University Law Review 1309 (2003), paraphrasing Arkansas Constitution art. II, § 13; Illinois Constitution art. I, § 12; Maine Constitution art. I, § 13; Maryland Constitution Decl. of Rights, art. 19; Massachusetts Constitution pt. 1, § 11; Minnesota Constitution art. 1 § 8; New Hampshire Constitution pt. I, art. 14; Rhode Island Constitution art. I, § 5; Vermont Constitution ch. I, art. 4; and Wisconsin Constitution art. I, § 9. [↩]
17 USC § 1201(a)(2). [↩]
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer v. Grokster, 545 US 913, 932 (2005). [↩]
Jonathan Band & Andrew J. McLaughlin, The Marshall Papers: A Peek Behind the Scenes at the Making of Sony v. Universal, 17 Columbia – VLA Journal of Law & the Arts 427 (1993). [↩]
Draft Majority Opinion of Associate Justice Harry A. Blackmun at 35 (June 13, 1983). [↩]
The Brave Lord Nelson, Timely Topics, Vol. v. No. 1, pg 286 (Sept. 7, 1900). [↩]
In re Aimster Copyright Litigation, 334 F.3d 643, 650 (7th Cir. 2003), “Willful blindness is knowledge, in copyright law as it is in the law generally”; See also Island Software and Computer Service v. Microsoft, 413 F.3d 257, 263 (2nd Cir. 2005). [↩]
Gershwin Publishing v. Columbia Artists Management, 443 F.2d 1159, 1162. [↩]

Posted in: Copyright reform · 17 comments

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Is YouTube a Service Provider or Content Provider?

April 07, 2011 · Terry Hart · 9 comments

The briefs for Viacom’s appeal against the District Court’s decision in its lawsuit against YouTube have been filed. Last June, the Southern District of New York granted the video hosting site’s motion for summary judgment, saying the DMCA’s safe harbor immunizes YouTube from liability for copyright infringement by its users.

The crux of the case involves the interpretation of 17 USC § 512(c)(1)(A) and §512(c)(1)(B) — whether YouTube had actual knowledge of infringing works that were uploaded and whether it had the right and ability to control the uploading of infringing videos.

Today, however, I wanted to look at one of the other, and (to me, at least) more interesting issues raised on appeal. Does YouTube even qualify as a “service provider” under the DMCA in the first place?

Title II of the DMCA, the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act, provides “safe harbors” for online service providers that limit their liability for copyright infringement arising out of specific situations. The one YouTube and most user-generated content sites claim protection under regards “information residing on systems or networks at direction of users” and is found in §512(c). Specifically, 17 USC § 512(c)(1) provides that “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”.

Viacom argues that YouTube’s activities go beyond the collateral scope of the storage functions described in §512(c). If the 2nd Circuit agrees, this means YouTube wouldn’t receive the DMCA’s harbor no matter what “knowledge” or “right and ability to control” mean — its liability would be analyzed under traditional secondary liability doctrines. And some have suggested that, absent this safe harbor, there is a likelihood that YouTube could end up liable for copyright infringement of its users — at least as far as its operation during the time that is at issue in this lawsuit.¹

Under Construction

The internet looked a lot different in 1998 when Congress passed the DMCA. The amicus brief filed by the Washington Legal Foundation provides a good look at the differences:

At that time ‘service providers’ were generally thought of as the ‘doorways’ to the Internet — the means by which individual users accessed the Internet to exchange electronic mail, view websites, and download files. Common service providers in the 1990’s were America Online, Compuserve, and individual educational and work institutions.

User content was typically located on that user’s individual web page, which was ‘hosted’ on the service provider’s computer systems. In this manner, a user’s individual web page was made available to other Internet users around the world. These individual web pages often contained copyrighted material belonging to others — at that time mainly photographs and music recordings.

Content owners, to protect their intellectual property, brought lawsuits against both the website owner (often an individual) for placing the content on the web page and the service provider for ‘hosting’ the web page. Service providers were thus faced with exposure to copyright liability solely by virtue of their desire to provide to individuals the ‘doorway’ to the Internet.

The problem confronted by Congress in the 1990′s with respect to the Internet and intellectual property rights was how to strike the balance between protecting a content owner’s rights, on one hand, and encouraging service providers to continue to offer Internet access on the other. Congress thus sought, through the DMCA, to address this problem.

As stated in the floor debates: ‘One of the things we do here is to say: ’If you are on-line service provider, if you are responsible for the production of all of this out to the public, you will not be held automatically responsible if someone misuses the electronic airway you provide to steal other people’s property. There is a balance here. We want to protect property, but we do not want to deter people from making this [the Internet] widely available. We have a problem here of making sure that intellectual property is protected, but we do not want freedom of expression impinged upon’” …

The DMCA was enacted with that balance in mind: encouraging access to the Internet while at the same time protecting intellectual property.

It’s easy to forget how much has changed since then. According to an article on Buzzle.com, the top 10 websites in 1997 were:

Geocities
Yahoo and Yahooligans, Yahoo Sports and My Yahoo
Starwave Corporation – Where More People Click
Excite, Magellan and City.Net
PathFinder, and Time/Warner and CNN sites: Warner Bros., HBO, DC Comics, Extra TV, Babylon5, CNN , CNN Financial Network and AllPolitics
AltaVista Search Engine
AOL Member Home Pages
CNET, Search.Com, News.Com and Download.com
The New York Times on the Web
Ziff Davis and HotFiles

Many of the things we take for granted on the internet today had yet to arrive back then. Wikipedia launched in 2001. Social networking sites didn’t take off until after the new millennium — Friendster launched in 2002, Myspace in 2003, Facebook in 2004. Terms like “blog” and “Web 2.0″ were years away from becoming over-used. And, of course, YouTube itself didn’t launch until 2005.

But perhaps nothing illustrates the evolution of the internet from the time of the DMCA to now better than this note from the Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights White Paper. Established as part of the Information Infrastructure Task Force (IITF), the Working Group was charged with examining the adequacy of IP law in the online world and recommending any changes needed. It released a preliminary draft of its report (the “Green Paper”) in 1994, and the final draft (the “White Paper”) in ’95; the DMCA was largely the end result of the IITF’s work.

The note in the White Paper explains to readers how to access copies of the Green Paper and other IITF documents online:

“The IITF Bulletin Board can be accessed through the Internet by pointing the Gopher Client to iitf.doc.gov or by telnet to iitf.doc.gov (log in as gopher). The Bulletin Board is also accessible at 202-501-1920 using a personal computer and a telephone modem.”²

This comparison of the internet at the time the DMCA was passed and now illustrates the challenges courts face in interpreting its provisions. Despite being little more than a decade old, the law is called upon to deal with circumstances largely unforeseen when it was written.

Service Provider or Content Provider?

Viacom argues in its brief that “YouTube’s performance and licensing of user-uploaded copyrighted content are not the type of storage activities that the DMCA immunizes from liability.”³ The “storage” services protected by the safe harbor of § 512(c) were meant to cover things like “server space for a user’s web site, for a chatroom, or other forum in which material may be posted at the direction of users” — the safe harbor doesn’t “suspend liability for other [non-storage] acts in which the service provider might engage with respect to the user-posted content.”

Viacom points to several YouTube functions that it considers “non-storage acts.” (1) “YouTube transcodes user uploaded material into a standard format for display, distribution, and performance of the content on its website and third-party platforms”; (2) YouTube’s playback function, where a visitor can view a video stored by another user on a “watch” page containing an embedded video player; (3) the automatic recommendation of additional videos that YouTube displays after playback of a video has finished; and (4) YouTube’s licensing of uploaded videos to third parties, such as Verizon Wireless.

“Congress did not intend to give content-based entertainment enterprises an unfair advantage over traditional media merely because they operate on the Internet,” says Viacom, casting the safe harbor as one intended to apply to “passive providers of storage” that provide “server space for a user’s web site, for a chatroom, or other forum in which material may be posted at the direction of users.”

But YouTube, as Viacom argues, “is an integrated media business that ‘compare[es] [it]sel[f] to, say, abc/fox/whatever.’” The functions YouTube engages in are done “not to facilitate storage, but to facilitate activities that are necessary for wide public dissemination of the works” and “performed ‘as a course of its normal operation … uninstructed by the user.’”

Bruce Lehman, who chaired the previously-mentioned Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights and helped develop the DMCA, adopts a similar argument in the amicus brief filed by the International Intellectual Property Institute:

Companies who receive their value from hosting or otherwise enabling the spread of infringing content are not service providers — and they certainly are not proving a service that contributes to the ‘speed and capacity of the internet.’ … These companies provide content.

The defendant’s stated goal was to create a media business ‘just like TV.’ … It succeeded: users who upload media provided programming which the defendant licensed, controlled, and broadcasted in order to receive ad revenue. This business model is not new, unique, or worthy of a special status under the law simply because it disseminates its media over the Internet.

Lehman relies on the Working Paper to support a distinction between companies providing internet infrastructure — which are protected by the DMCA safe harbors — and “content providers.” YouTube, the brief argues, is a content provider. It calls itself a “consumer media company.” It provides “user access to its servers to upload video files” and “reformats the videos and broadcasts them over its website for its customers” in order to” create a business model which was ‘just like TV.’”

Such a model depends on advertising revenue, which depends on “attracting the greatest possible viewership”; high-value, infringing content draws a lot of traffic, giving YouTube an incentive to do as little as possible to prevent users from uploading this type of content. In short, a “content-based business model” like YouTube forecloses protection under the DMCA.

Interpreting the Statute

Viacom’s interpretation of the storage activity safe harbor was rejected by the District Court. The court relied largely on how the provision was interpreted by other courts dealing with similar situations to come to its conclusion.

In Io Group v. Veoh Networks, the plaintiff argued that a video-hosting site very similar to YouTube was engaged in acts beyond the storage activities protected by the DMCA. But the court disagreed based on the “structure and language” of the safe harbor provisions:

The statute itself is structured in a way that distinguishes between so-called “conduit only” functions under Section 512(a) and those functions addressed by Section 512(c) (and other subsections as well). Perhaps most notably, OCILLA contains two definitions of “service provider.” 17 U.S.C. § 512(k). The narrower definition, which pertains only to service providers falling under Section 512(a), “means an entity offering the transmission, routing, or providing of connections for digital online communications, between or among points specified by a user, of material of the user’s choosing, without modification to the content of the materials as sent or received.”

By contrast, no such limitation as to the modification of material is included in the broader definition of “service provider,” which the parties agree applies to Veoh. Instead, “the term ‘service provider’ means a provider of online services or network access, or the operator of facilities therefor, and includes an entity described in subparagraph (A).” Had Congress intended to include a limitation as to a service provider’s modification of user-submitted information, it would have said so expressly and unambiguously. (Citations removed.)⁴

A different court came to the same conclusion in UMG Recordings’ lawsuit against Veoh:

Under UMG’s interpretation, § 512(c) would apply only to operational features that provide or constitute storage—and nothing more. But there is no language in § 512(c) that so limits its applicability. Congress did not provide merely that “a service provider shall not be liable for storing material at the direction of the user” or that “a service provider’s liability shall be limited only for conduct that is storage.” Instead, as the language makes clear, the statute extends to functions other than mere storage; it applies to “infringement of copyright by reason of the storage at the direction of a user ….” In short, the narrow construction of the statute that UMG advocates is not the one Congress enacted. (Citation removed.)⁵

The court in UMG Recordings also accepted Veoh’s argument that the “by reason of the storage” language in § 512(c) is “broad causal language that is clearly meant to cover more than mere electronic storage lockers.” Its reasoning was adopted wholesale by the Viacom court to reach its conclusion. Said UMG Recordings:

Common sense and widespread usage establish that “by reason of” means “as a result of” or “something that can be attributed to ….” So understood, when copyrighted content is displayed or distributed on Veoh it is “as a result of” or “attributable to” the fact that users uploaded the content to Veoh’s servers to be accessed by other means. If providing access could trigger liability without the possibility of DMCA immunity, service providers would be greatly deterred from performing their basic, vital and salutary function—namely, providing access to information and material for the public.

The Viacom court described those acts “attributable” to a user uploading content as within the “collateral scope of ‘storage’ and allied functions.” Anything outside that collateral scope would fall outside the protection of the safe harbor and have to be analyzed under traditional doctrines of secondary liability, but in this case, YouTube’s “replication, transmittal, and display of videos” are within the provision’s scope.

The Issue on Appeal

The case law doesn’t seem to give Viacom much room to argue on this point, but keep in mind that the above-cited cases are only district court cases. Viacom argues that the lower court’s broad interpretation of the “by reason of” language goes against Supreme Court precedent that interprets the same language in other contexts as implying some form of proximate causation rather than the mere “but for” causation embraced by the lower court.

Moreover, YouTube notably doesn’t address the fact that it actually licensed user content to third parties in its reply brief; if anything would fall outside the collateral scope of storage functioning, I would think this type of act would.

We may get a preview of how successful Viacom ultimately is on this issue before the 2nd Circuit issues its ruling. The 9th Circuit is currently hearing UMG Recordings appeal in the case discussed in the previous section. UMG advances the same argument in its brief. Considering the similarities between the two cases, and the fact that the UMG appeal began months before Viacom’s appeal, the 9th Circuit’s eventual holding could forecast the willingness of appellate courts in narrowing the currently accepted scope of § 512(c) at the district court level.

Left unsaid at the district court level is any sense of the “outer bounds” of what service providers can do with material stored at the direction of users and remain within the DMCA’s safe harbor. Each part of the statutory language has been given its broadest meaning. A service provider obviously has to meet the other requirements of the DMCA to be immune from liability — but considering how broadly the Viacom court read the “knowledge” and “right and ability to control” requirements, the DMCA seems to be stretched far beyond what Congress had intended in 1998.

Is YouTube a service provider or a content provider? Should this distinction play a role in whether it qualifies for safe harbor? And, in the broader sense, is the DMCA as a whole, considering the evolution of online communications since it passed, still capable of striking the balance between innovation and protecting that content that gives value to that innovation?

Footnotes

Trevor Cloak, The Digital Titanic: The Sinking of YouTube.com in the DMCA’s Safe Harbor, Note, 60 Vanderbilt Law Review 1559, 1573-78 (2007). [↩]
White Paper, pg. 4, n.11. [↩]
The entire argument is found at pp. 49-55 of the Opening Brief for Plaintiffs-Appellants. [↩]
586 F.Supp.2d 1132 (ND Cali 2008). [↩]
UMG Recordings v Veoh Networks, 620 F.Supp.2d 1081, 1089 (CD Cali 2008). [↩]

Posted in: Copyright news · 9 comments

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.torrent = .crime

March 01, 2011 · Terry Hart · 7 comments

I sometimes see the phrase “.torrent = .crime” used online in discussions about enforcing copyright online. It is considered by copyright critics as a dig against efforts to enforce the widespread copyright infringement occurring within the bittorrent ecosystem¹ — the idea being that content producers have mistakenly declared torrent technology categorically unlawful.

Most recently, it has popped up in response to the US government’s seizure of domain names as part of Operation in Our Sites. A number of the sites targeted were part of the bittorrent ecosystem, like meta-search engine Torrent Finder. And with the pending appeal of Isohunt in the Ninth Circuit, the meme will likely persist — the torrent search engine’s appellate brief devotes considerable space to rebutting the association between torrents and infringement. Proponents of the meme believe the association is unfair and are quick to point out the many legitimate uses of the bittorrent protocol as evidence.

The snappy soundbite, however, glosses over the distinction between a technology and uses of a technology. It also relies on a fundamentally flawed premise: the fact that there are some legitimate uses of a technology does not make all uses of that technology legitimate. And within the general bittorrent ecosystem, there are a lot of illegitimate uses of the technology — so much so that the association between “torrent” and “crime” is not entirely unfair.

The Supreme Court, through its decisions in Sony Corp of America v. Universal City Studios, 464 US 417, and MGM v. Grokster, 545 US 913, maintained what is really a common sense distinction between technology and uses of that technology. Simply put, you can’t be liable simply for making something that can be used for copyright infringement, but you can be liable if you intend or encourage infringing uses.

Put another way, while direct infringement is a strict liability tort, meaning the intent of an infringer is irrelevant, secondary liability requires some form of culpability. Grokster reads Sony as saying you can’t impute this intent based solely on the characteristics of a device. But the rule in Sony doesn’t mean a manufacturer or service is completely precluded from liability if it satisfies the Sony safe harbor — a manufacturer or service provider can still be liable if it is found to be culpable in other ways, including whether it induced infringement.

The Supreme Court in Grokster noted three features of the evidence of intent that most showed culpability. Satisfying a known source of demand for copyright infringement, no attempt to filter or develop mechanisms for diminishing infringing activities, and selling advertising based on high-volume use — revenues increase the more people use it, and the overwhelming amount of people use it for infringing purposes. Any one of these alone is not enough to show culpability, but taken together, the intent to encourage infringement is, in the words of the Court, “unmistakeable.”

The torrent ecosystem facilitates piracy — not by design, but by use.

I’m talking about just the torrent ecosystem here — the trackers, hosts, and search engines that do little if anything to ensure their services are not used to aid in distributing unauthorized content. BitTorrent as a protocol is in no way a problem. Facebook, Twitter, and other large-scale systems use the BitTorrent protocol to distribute software updates to their servers; the same is true of gaming companies like Blizzard Entertainment, makers of Worlds of Warcraft. Many Linux distros are promulgated via bittorrent. The technology offers several advantages over other methods of distributing large amounts of data.

But outside these specific uses is a world of public torrent hosts that allow anyone to upload torrent files of any type of content, no questions asked, and search engines that can help users locate whatever they want. And it is here where, any way you look at it, “.torrent” actually does equal “.crime”. The overwhelming majority of what is being distributed in the general bittorrent ecosystem is infringing.

How overwhelming? According to the available research, anywhere from 90-99% of files available in the torrent ecosystem are infringing.² A study released January 2011 discovered only 1 legitimately offered file in the top 10,000 torrents offered by one of the largest public bittorrent trackers.

In the face of such overwhelming infringement, it’s absurd to think you can design a site or service that facilitates access to this universe of material, without any attempt at filtering or mitigating infringement, and escape liability. The fact that there are some legitimate uses for the technology does not mean that all uses of the technology are legitimate. Search engines, trackers, and torrent hosts exist for verified and authorized content. But that fact doesn’t save the general and open-for-all torrent sites; neither does the fact that the protocol is used by large-scale systems for distributing software updates. It’s not like Facebook and Twitter are going to Torrent Finder to find new patches.

The distinction between legitimate and illegitimate uses of bittorrent is a distinction between services where the use of the protocol is secondary to the service and the ability to pirate through the service is diminished and minimized, and services that tap into the general bittorrent ecosystem. The latter services may claim to have legitimate uses, but these claims are drowned out by the evidence.

The business model of these sites depends on popular — ie, copyrighted — content. It’s the major draw: Torrent Finder wasn’t making $15,000 a year advertising to people looking for the latest Linux distros or searching for unsigned bands. Isohunt’s Gary Fung admitted as much during the course of that litigation.³ Courts looking at nearly every other major file-sharing service that has found itself subject to a lawsuit have come to the same conclusion: ”While there is doubtless some demand for free Shakespeare,” said the Supreme Court in Grokster, ”the evidence shows that substantive volume is a function of free access to copyrighted work.”⁴

Sites that have gone legit have discovered just how true this is. Search engine YouTorrent reported that it lost over half its traffic when it stopped indexing files from sites like PirateBay and only returned verified authorized and open-license results.

Some torrent site operators have adopted a “would if they could” attitude toward copyright infringement: they’d like to stop it, but it’s impossible to know what files are authorized and which are not. This argument doesn’t hold up against the significant percentage of infringing files available.

Some theories of secondary liability, like contributory infringement, require that the secondary party has some knowledge of the underlying misconduct, with the caveat that the secondary party cannot escape liability by being “willfully blind.” You can’t, like an ostrich with his head in the sand, deliberately ignore bad behavior and expect to stay out of trouble. While the question of willful blindness can often be a tough one to answer, courts haven’t had trouble in cases of file-sharing services. With such a high percentage of infringing files present on all these services — 89%, 95%, 99% — you can’t claim ignorance of infringement.

Anyone who bristles at the association of bittorrent with copyright infringement has to admit, if honest, that within the general bittorrent ecosystem, torrents have largely become synonymous with distributing unauthorized content. The technology itself is neutral, it can be put to legitimate or illegitimate uses, but any service wanting to become a component part of the unregulated, open, and public torrent universe has a high burden for establishing legitimacy.

Footnotes

The bittorrent “ecosystem” describes the multitude of independent components — from torrent file hosts, to torrent search engines and meta search engines, to trackers — that together make the bittorrent protocol work. [↩]
Robert Layton & Paul Watters, Investigation into the extent of infringing content on BitTorrent networks, Internet Commerce Security Laboratory (2010), confirms 89% of all torrents in sample infringing; Sauhard Sahi & Ed Felten, Census of files available via BitTorrent, (2010), concluded 99% of files likely infringing; Columbia Pictures v. Fung, Order granting Plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment on liability (2009), evidence showed approximately 95% of files available on defendant’s torrent search engines infringing. [↩]
Columbia Pictures v. Fung, p. 34. [↩]
545 US at 926. [↩]

Posted in: Secondary liability · 7 comments

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Drawing Distinctions

November 11, 2010 · Terry Hart · 1 comment

Earlier this month, I wrote about the Copyright Principles Project, an independent initiative that presented twenty-five recommendations for reforming copyright law for the digital age. One of the reasons I felt it was worth mentioning was because, unlike many other reform efforts, the Copyright Principles Project included participants from a wide variety of perspectives: academics, content industry representatives, and private practitioners.

One of the contributers to the Project was Jeremy Williams, Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of Warner Bros. Entertainment. This past April, Williams joined Pamela Samuelson — the Project’s coordinator — and several other Project contributors for a two-day conference marking the 300th anniversary of the Statute of Anne, the first modern copyright law. Hosted by the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, the Copyright @ 300 symposium used the anniversary as an opportunity to look back at “the law’s influence on the history and evolution of the Anglo-American copyright tradition” and look forward to copyright law’s challenges in the future.

Williams spoke to attendees at a seminar titled “Looking Forward: What Challenges Does Copyright Face in the Twenty-First Century.” The Berkeley Center has audio from the event available online. I recommend giving it a listen; Williams talks about the importance of copyright attitudes for the future and touches on a number of themes I’ve discussed here from a perspective that is seldom seen in online discussions and academic literature.

Copyright attitudes

Williams joshingly introduces himself as a “defender of those poor, down-trodden Fortune 500 companies.” The health of copyright in the future, he states, depends entirely on the attitudes of “Digital Natives.” It will not be long before the generation that never knew a world where everything is connected will be ”lawmakers, norm-makers, and consumers.” Williams goes on to ask, “How do we promote respect for good copyright attitudes” when millions are simultaneously authors, distributors, and infringers.

This past Monday, I pointed out a recent paper that sheds some light on what these “Digital Natives” currently know and think about copyright law. Williams’s talk reflects a recognition of what the authors of that paper have found to be true. With those current attitudes in mind, he lays out what he considers should be the two main goals of copyright policy as it looks ahead:

Empower individuals as creators. Policymakers and stakeholders should try to steer clear of talk about the “wrongness” of noncommercial copying. Extending this goal to small producers, content creators should strive to make licensing of their content for creative uses cheap and easy, and give wide berth for fair use.
Move enforcement away from individuals and toward digital intermediaries.

Creative vs. Consumptive Uses

Next, Williams discussed the importance of distinguishing between creative and consumptive uses, a distinction I have previously made on this site. I wrote that the distinction is important to make because you’re dealing with an entirely different set of questions when you talk about fair use, remixes, and mashups then when you talk about filesharing. As it turns out, this is exactly the approach that Williams suggests is important for the future of copyright.

He says that promoting healthy copyright discussion requires a different approach for both types of uses: increased tolerance toward creative uses and increased focus on widespread, uncompensated dissemination of consumptive uses and the harm they cause.

From his own experience at Warner Bros., Williams identifies the primary creative uses that major creative companies deal with most often: fan uses and, as he puts it, ad hoc uses, like mash-ups. He suggests that companies like his should tolerate and support noncommercial uses — even tolerate some commercial uses. This is the approach he has taken, giving the okay to fan sites even when they use incidental advertising to support the site but drawing the line at fan merchandising. For third-party user-generated content sites like YouTube, he advocates “smart” technological filters that can identify uses of copyrighted works but allow creative uses like mash-ups.

Most importantly, Williams reiterates that these kinds of discussions should not revolve around copyright law. Rather, the focus should be on fostering mutually respectful behavior between creators and users.

Individual vs. Industrial Responsibility

The rest of Williams’s talk seemed to continue a meta-theme of drawing distinctions to further the health of copyright in the future. The next distinction he discussed was between individual responsibility for upholding copyright protection and “industrial” responsibility.

Basically, Williams says we should move away from placing responsibility on individuals as much as possible. People should be able to enjoy copyrighted works without thinking about copyright law.

The digital intermediaries — user-generated content and social networking sites — should instead be induced to help reduce the harm of widespread, uncompensated dissemination of copyrighted works, and copyright owners should be allowed to share in the value their works provide to these sites. Interestingly, Williams believes we should reduce the present focus on secondary liability doctrines. These doctrines suffer two disadvantages: because they require a showing of direct infringement, there is still a focus on individual behavior, and the factors involved in determining secondary liability — knowledge, inducement, etc. — are difficult to apply, leading to an uncertain and muddy legal landscape.

Williams’s recommendation? “Be direct about it.” Those who can protect copyright, should protect it. Those who can are likely to be the previously-mentioned social networking and user-generated content sites. Williams thinks the best way to implement this is through voluntary agreements and reasonable technological measures, with the law operating in the background as a way of inducing these sites to help solve problems in ways that are not commercially harmful to them.

Protest vs. Obliviousness

While you can find those people who embrace piracy as a “cause”, who believe they are making a “statement” or protesting against somebody or something when they share files without permission, the majority of people, especially digital natives, download simply because they can. Williams relates a conversation he had with his daughter. He asked her what her friends “think” when they choose to download music off p2p or torrent sites; she answered, “they don’t think.”

Unauthorized files are simply “there,” and unless you know otherwise, it is not unreasonable for someone to assume that if you find something online, you can download it. The future of copyright depends on addressing this obliviousness and helping the next generation understand the value copyright gives to creators.

Good Guys vs. Bad Guys

Williams wraps up his remarks by pointing out the one distinction that shouldn’t be made. Both sides in the copyright debates need to move past an “us vs. them” mentality, a “good guy-bad guy” way of thinking. Copyright is good for society and culture. Most people recognize the value of creativity and of artists. The emphasis should move away from the rules of copyright — ie, the notion that copyright exists solely to punish infringers — and toward the role of copyright.

Posted in: Copyright reform · 1 comment

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