Copyhype

On Monday, I looked at the majority’s opinion in American Broadcasting Companies v. Aereo, which held that the online television provider performed to the public under the Copyright Act. Today, I want to take a closer look at the dissent.

The dissent’s argument begins with the assertion, relying on a copyright treatise, that “The Networks’ claim is governed by a simple but profoundly important rule: A defendant may be held directly liable only if it has engaged in volitional conduct that violates the Act.” It then states that “This requirement is firmly grounded in the Act’s text, which defines ‘perform’ in active, affirmative terms: One ‘perform[s]’ a copyrighted ‘audiovisual work,’ such as a movie or news broadcast, by ‘show[ing] its images in any sequence’ or ‘mak[ing] the sounds accompanying it audible.’” Already, the soundness of the dissent’s argument is on shaky ground, as there is nothing necessarily “active” about the making of sounds of a broadcast audible. ¹The dissent also asserts that “Every Court of Appeals to have considered an automated-service provider’s direct liability for copyright infringement has adopted that rule.” But that’s not entirely the case, at least when it comes to the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Fox Broadcasting Co. v. Dish Network. The court there did not once utter the word “volition”, and district courts in the Circuit apparently don’t believe the test was adopted. See, e.g., Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Allvoice’s Motion to Dismiss Plaintiff’s First Amended Complaint, Oppenheimer v. Allvoices, Inc., No. C-14-00499 (ND Cali June 10, 2014) (“Although the Netcom requirement of “volitional” conduct for direct liability has been adopted by the Second and Fourth Circuits, the Ninth Circuit has not yet addressed the issue, and courts within this Circuit are split on it”); Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss, National Photo Group, LLC v. Allvoices, Inc., No. C-13-03627 (ND Cali Jan. 24, 2014) (noting volitional conduct “requirement has not been adopted by the Ninth Circuit and Courts within this Circuit are divided on whether the requirement is valid”).

But there’s a bigger problem with how the dissent defines perform, a definition which shapes its entire analysis of the issue: it is incorrect as a textual matter.

Statutory Interpretation

Examining the meaning of a word in a statute with the context of the whole act is a fundamental principle.

The meaning of terms on the statute books ought to be determined, not on the basis of which meaning can be shown to have been understood by a larger handful of the Members of Congress; but rather on the basis of which meaning is (1) most in accord with context and ordinary usage, and thus most likely to have been understood by the whole Congress which voted on the words of the statute (not to mention the citizens subject to it), and (2) most compatible with the surrounding body of law into which the provision must be integrated — a compatibility which, by a benign fiction, we assume Congress always has in mind. ²Green v. Bock Laundry Machine Co., 490 US 504, 528 (1989) (J. Scalia concurrence).

Obviously, the assumption is even stronger when we are talking not about provisions adopted at separate times but provisions enacted at the same time.

Along with this rule, the Supreme Court has called it “a cardinal principle of statutory construction” that statutes should be interpreted in a way that prevents any clause or provision from being rendered superfluous. ³Bennett v. Spear, 520 US 154, 173 (1997) (quoting US v. Menasche, 348 US 528, 538 (1955).

If we take heed of these canons, we can see that the majority in Aereo had the better interpretation of “perform.”

To begin with, it may not matter how active or affirmative Section 101 of the Copyright Act defines the act of performing, since the language of Section 106 establishes infringement in broader terms. It is only partially correct that Section 106 provides copyright owners the right to perform works publicly. Section 106 actually provides that “the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize” any of the enumerated acts such as public performance. (Emphasis added). The “and to authorize” language confirms that the exclusive domain of the copyright owner can be encroached by conduct beyond “active, affirmative” acts.

The Exceptions that Prove the Rule

The text of Section 111 supplies further support. Section 111(a) creates exceptions from copyright infringement for certain secondary transmissions of primary (broadcast) transmissions. One of these, Section 111(a)(3), exempts a carrier from liability “who has no direct or indirect control over the content or selection of the primary transmission or over the particular recipients of the secondary transmission, and whose activities with respect to the secondary transmission consist solely of providing wires, cables, or other communications channels for the use of others.” I don’t see how one can come up with a more passive system than this. The statutory text here also undermines the dissent’s argument that the key issue in determining who is directly liable is who selects the content since this exception applies only to carriers who do not select the content.

The exception in Section 111(a)(1) is even more clear. That provision declares that a transmission is not infringement if “the secondary transmission is not made by a cable system, and consists entirely of the relaying, by the management of a hotel, apartment house, or similar establishment, of signals transmitted by a broadcast station licensed by the Federal Communications Commission, within the local service area of such station, to the private lodgings of guests or residents of such establishment, and no direct charge is made to see or hear the secondary transmission.” Save for the fact that Aereo was charging for its transmission, this sounds a lot like how it characterized its service when it argued that it was not performing: “do[ing] no more than supply[ing] equipment that ‘emulate[s] the operation of a home antenna.’” Yet if that does not constitute performing under the Copyright Act, there would be no need for the 111(a)(1) exception.

The dissent’s misstep is reminiscent of the 1892 Supreme Court decision in Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, which decided that a federal statute that referred to “labor” only applied to manual labor and not “professional” services. Not only is this distinction not found in the text of the statute, it also “renders the exceptions for actors, artists, lecturers, and singers utterly inexplicable.” ⁴Antonin Scalia, Common-Law Courts in a Civil-Law System: The Role of United States Federal Courts in Interpreting the Constitution and Laws, The Tanner Lectures on Human Values 79, 94 (1995). Similarly, the Copyright Act’s specific exceptions for two passive activities would be “utterly inexplicable” under the dissent’s definition of “perform.” If Congress did not mean to include such conduct within the definition of “perform”, it would not have needed to create these exceptions.

In sum, the dissent’s interpretation of “perform” in the Copyright Act does not hold up when we interpret the term within the context of the whole act.