Copyright – Page 8 – Attorney Evan Brown

November 9, 2015 Copyright

Digital locker service not liable for copyright infringement based on user download of unlicensed ebook

digital locker

A boon for cloud service providers: Court decision protects locker service from infringement over user’s storage and downloading of unlicensed copy of ebook.

Plaintiff-author granted a license to defendant-digital locker service, authorizing users of defendant’s services to store and download sample copies of plaintiff’s ebook. Plaintiff later terminated the license. On two separate occasions, one of defendant’s customers — who had acquired a sample copy of the ebook during the license period — downloaded her sample copy from defendant’s locker storage service and onto her e-reader device. Plaintiff filed suit, claiming these post-license termination customer downloads amounted to direct and contributory infringement by the file locker service.

Both parties moved for summary judgment. The court granted defendant’s motion and denied plaintiff’s motion.

As to the question of direct infringement, the court relied heavily on Cartoon Network v. CSC Holdings, 536 F.3d 121 (2nd Cir. 2008) to hold that a lack of evidence of defendant’s “volitional conduct” in distributing and reproducing the downloaded copies precluded a claim for direct infringement. Quoting from Capitol Records v. ReDigi, 934 F.Supp.2d 640 (S.D.N.Y. 2013), the court found that defendant “did not have a ‘fundamental and deliberate role,” such that it was transformed ‘from a passive provider of a space in which infringing activities happened to occur to an active participant in the process of copyright infringement.’”

Plaintiff’s contributory infringement claim failed under the “substantial noninfringing uses” test (the “Sony-Betamax Rule”) set out in Sony v. Universal, 464 U.S. 417 (1984). The court held that defendant could not be held liable for contributory infringement because its digital locker systems was capable of substantial non-infringing uses, and indeed was used for commercially significant noninfringing uses.

Smith v. BarnesandNoble.com, No. 2015 WL 6681145 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 2, 2015)

Evan Brown is a Chicago attorney helping clients in matters dealing with copyright, technology, the internet and new media. Call him at (630) 362-7237, send email to ebrown [at] internetcases dot com, or follow him on Twitter @internetcases

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Alex Thomson under this Creative Commons license.

June 10, 2015 Copyright, DMCA

Is a DMCA subpoena to identify unknown infringers valid if the infringement has ended?

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) is well-known for its notice and takedown provisions. But the DMCA provides a number of other interesting mechanisms, including a procedure for potential copyright plaintiffs to send subpoenas to online service providers to learn the identity of users who posted infringing content to that service. A recent case involving some subpoenas that a copyright owner sent to eBay examines the relationship between the notice and takedown procedures on one hand, and the subpoena mechanism on the other. The question before the court was whether a DMCA subpoena is valid if, by the time it is served on the online service provider, that online service provider has already removed or has disabled access to that content.

Section 512(h) (17 U.S.C. 512(h)) spells out the DMCA subpoena process, and how it relates to the notice and takedown provisions. An online service provider must act expeditiously to identify the user who uploaded infringing content “[u]pon receipt of the issued subpoena, either accompanying or subsequent to the receipt of a [takedown request].” That plain language seems straightforward — an online service provider has to provide the identifying information in response to any subpoena it receives either with or subsequent to a takedown notice.

But it was not so straightforward in a 2011 case, where some confusing facts made for some confusing law. In Maximized Living, Inc., v. Google, Inc., 2011 WL 6749017 (N.D. Cal. December 22, 2011), the copyright holder sent a subpoena to the online service provider after the copyright holder had sent a DMCA takedown notice. That would appear to comport with the statute — the subpoena came subsequent to the takedown notice. But the problem in that case was that the takedown notice was not valid. By the time it was sent, the alleged infringer had already removed the infringing content. From that, the Maximized Living case pronounced that “the subpoena power of §512(h) is limited to currently infringing activity and does not reach former infringing activity that has ceased and thus can no longer be removed or disabled.”

In the recent case of In re DMCA Subpoena to eBay, Inc., eBay, as the recipient of subpoenas to identify some of its users, picked up on the Maximized Living holding to argue that it did not have to answer the subpoenas because it had already taken down the offending content pursuant to previous takedown notices. Since the subpoenas did not relate to “currently infringing activity,” eBay argued à la Maximized Living, that the subpoenas had not been issued under §512(h)’s power and were therefore invalid.

The court rejected eBay’s argument. The key distinction in this case was that, unlike in Maximized Living, the takedown notices in this case, when they issued, related to content that was on the eBay servers at the time the takedown notices were issued. Granted, some of those takedown notices went all the way back to early 2012 (query whether the subpoena should be valid if it would only uncover the identity of an infringer for whom the 3-year copyright statute of limitations had passed; but that wasn’t before the court).

So to simply state the rule in this case — for a DMCA subpoena to be valid, it has to relate to a valid DMCA takedown notice. That DMCA takedown notice is not valid unless it was served at a time when infringing content resided on the service. An online service provider cannot avoid the obligation of responding to a subpoena by taking down the content, thereby causing there to be no “currently infringing activity”. Such a rule would, as the court observed, cause the online service provider’s safe harbor protection to also shield the alleged infringer from being identified. That would indeed be an odd application of the DMCA’s protection. The court in this case avoided that outcome.

In re DMCA Subpoena to eBay, Inc., 2015 WL 3555270 (S.D. Cal. June 5, 2015).

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Thomas Galvez under this Creative Commons license.

May 8, 2015 Copyright, Litigation

Court will not order seizure of domain name in copyright infringement case

Plaintiffs – the owners of the copyright in photographs – sued defendants for copyright infringement over the unauthorized publication of photos on one of the business defendant’s websites that used the domain name <4umf.com>. The court awarded judgment and damages in plaintiffs’ favor when the business defendant defaulted.

Even after having received two extensions of time from the court, though, plaintifsf had not yet served the summons and complaint upon one of the individual defendants. The court ordered plaintiffs to show cause why the action should not be dismissed against that defendant for failure to serve him. In response, plaintiffs stated that despite diligent efforts, they could not identify or locate the individual plaintiff. So it asked the court – via a “motion to seize domain name” – to order the turnover of the <4umf.com> domain name for the purpose of uncovering the defendant’s true identity.

The court denied the motion. It found that plaintiffs had failed to demonstrate why the court should exercise auhority over the domain name as property subject to the court’s control and authority. It rejected plaintiffs’ attempts to liken the situation to other cases in which courts had ordered the seizure of domain names in trademark actions for over disputed domain names. “[S]eizures under the former circumstances were contemplated by the [Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act] to combat ‘cybersquatting.'”

The court also noted that seizure of copyrighted materials is a permissible remedy under the Copyright Act and has been granted by certain courts in some circumstances. But in this case, plaintiffs did not seek seizure pursuant to the Copyright Act § 503, nor did they seek impoundment or seizure in their complaint or motion for default. Plaintiffs sought only damages and attorneys’ fees, which the Court awarded.

Further, the court noted that plaintiffs were not seeking to reclaim their copyrighted material by seizing the six infringing photos, but rather the entirety of the domain name. The court was sympathetic – although plaintiffs may have had difficulty locating defendants and enforcing the default judgment, plaintiffs had not demonstrated why that entitled them to seizure of the whole domain name, or how seizing the domain name would facilitate identification or location of defendants or collection on the judgment. Even if seizure were appropriate at this late stage, it the court found that to be an overly broad remedy for the violations here.

BWP Media USA, Inc. v. NV Media Group, Inc., 2015 WL 2152679 (S.D.N.Y. May 6, 2015)

October 16, 2014 Copyright, DMCA

GitHub jeopardizes its DMCA safe harbor status by launching its new policy

GitHub has baked in some feelgood to its new DMCA takedown policy. The new setup features clearer language, a refusal to automatically disable all forks of an allegedly infringing repository, and a 24-hour window in which the target of a takedown notice may make changes. The mechanisms of this third point ought to cause one to consider whether GitHub is risking the protections of the DMCA safe harbor.

If a DMCA takedown notice alleges that only certain files (as opposed to the whole repository) infringe, under the new policy, GitHub “will contact the user who created the repository and give them approximately 24 hours to delete or modify the content specified in the notice.” If the user makes changes to the repository, the burden shifts back to the sender of the DMCA notice. This shifing-the-burden-back seems problematic under the DMCA.

GitHub’s policy says:

If the user makes changes, the copyright owner must review them and renew or revise their takedown notice if the changes are insufficient. GitHub will not take any further action unless the copyright owner contacts us to either renew the original takedown notice or submit a revised one. If the copyright owner is satisfied with the changes, they may either submit a formal retraction or else do nothing. GitHub will interpret silence longer than two weeks as an implied retraction of the takedown notice.

The DMCA protects a party in GitHub’s position so long as the party “responds expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing upon notification of claimed infringement”. Read that provision carefully — the response must be to take down, not merely take steps to work with the alleged infringer to make it right. GitHub’s new mechanism of interpreting silence as a retraction is not an expeditious removal of or disabling access to allegedly infringing material. Nothing in the DMCA requires the sender of the takedown notice to have to ask twice.

You’ve got to hand it to GitHub for trying to make the world a better place through this new policy. The intended net effect is to reduce the number of instances in which entire repositories are taken down simply because of a few allegedly infringing files. But GitHub is putting something of great value, namely, its DMCA safe harbor protection, at risk.

Many copyright plaintiffs look for every possible angle to pin liability. You can almost be certain that a copyright owner will challenge GitHub’s safe harbor status on the ground that GitHub did not respond expeditiously. It seems odd GitHub would be willing to toss a perfectly good affirmative defense. One would think the better approach would be to go ahead and take the repository down after 24 hours, rather than leaving it up and risk a finding on “non-expeditiousness”.

Microsoft letter to GitHub over DRM-free music software is not the first copyright-ironic action against an intermediary

Evan Brown is an attorney in Chicago advising clients on matters dealing with copyright, technology, the internet and new media.

October 14, 2014 Copyright

YouTube has been a billion dollar boon to big media

This NBC News piece reports that since 2007, YouTube’s ContentID program has enabled copyright holders to monetize content posted to the service and get paid a billion dollars in the process. (Also included in the report is the staggering statistic that ContentID scans 400 years of content every day — we live in content-producing world of crazy proportions!)

So we see that with this kind of cash rolling in, it’s no wonder that Viacom finally came to its senses earlier this year when it decided to discontinue its litigation against YouTube. The billion dollar notion is also interesting — that’s the very amount Viacom sought when it filed suit in March 2007.

September 30, 2014 Copyright

Copyright, not privacy, motivated Reddit to take down photos of nude celebrities

This VentureBeat piece with Reddit CEO Yishan Wong brings up a number of interesting facts concerning Reddit in the wake of its receiving an additional $50 million funding round. One of those pieces of interesting information concerns Reddit’s decision to take down a subreddit devoted to the sharing of recently-leaked celebrity nude photos.

Says Wong:

If there’s any confusion: [Reddit] did not shut down /r/TheFappening due to content linking to nude celebrity photos. The subreddit was shut down because users were reposting content already taken down due to valid DMCA requests, and because spammers began posting links to the images hosted on their own pay-per-click sites, or sites intended to spread malware.

We can’t read too much from this comment, but it does implicate that the dignitary interests of the celebrities involved did not motivate Reddit to do the right thing. Instead, the risk of copyright liability (or, more precisely, the risk that DMCA safe harbor protection may be eliminated) was a stronger motivation.

Evan Brown is an attorney in Chicago advising clients on matters dealing with technology, the internet and new media.

July 24, 2014 Copyright

When is news reporting fair use under copyright law?

Blogger claims fair use supports his challenge to DMCA takedown of YouTube video. But “news reporting” aspect of fair use can be tricky.

An embattled California pastor sent a DMCA takedown notice to YouTube over a video clip that a blogger used “to report accurately the relationship” between two organizations. The blogger sent a counternotification and explained that he believes copyright fair use protects him against the takedown (and apparently against infringement as well).

The blogger invokes, among other things, the news reporting aspect of fair use, which one finds set forth in Section 107 of the Copyright Act. A recent fair use case, Swatch Group Management Services Ltd. v. Bloomberg, 742 F. 3d 17 (2d Cir. 2014) might shed some interesting light on how news reporting plays into the analysis. In that case, the court found that defendant was protected by fair use when it distributed an audio recording of a company’s earnings call. Unlike many fair use cases, in which the analysis under the first factor (purpose and character of the use) becomes a question of whether the subsequent use is “transformative,” the court observes the following:

In the context of news reporting and analogous activities … the need to convey information to the public accurately may in some instances make it desirable and consonant with copyright law for a defendant to faithfully reproduce an original work rather than transform it.

A defendant may in some circumstances provide transformative material along with the faithful reproduction of an original work. But the absence of that transformative material will not disqualify a defendant from showing fair use:

[B]y disseminating not just a written transcript or article but an actual sound recording, [defendant] was able to convey with precision not only what [plaintiff’s] executives said, but also how they said it. This latter type of information may be just as valuable … as the former, since a speaker’s demeanor, tone, and cadence can often elucidate his or her true beliefs far beyond what a stale transcript or summary can show.

So we see that the news reporting aspect of fair use can be conceptually separated from transformative use.

There is a slippery slope risk here, and the court recognized that. It cited to the Supreme Court’s Harper & Row decision to observe that “[t]he promise of copyright would be an empty one if it could be avoided merely by dubbing the infringement a fair use ‘news report'”. In this case, however, the “independent informational value inherent in a faithful recording” carried the day. From this we see a rule or guide: use of a piece of content is more likely to be newsworthy if the piece of content itself, and not just the raw information within the content, is a news event.

Evan Brown is an attorney in Chicago advising clients on matters dealing with technology, the internet and new media.

July 15, 2014 Copyright, DMCA

DMCA’s protection of copyright management information applied to non-electronic works

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) provides safe harbors from copyright infringement liability for online service providers (17 U.S.C. 512) and makes it unlawful to circumvent technological measures that effectively control access to copyrighted works (17 U.S.C. 1201). A lesser-known (and lesser-litigated) provision of the DMCA (17 U.S.C. 1202) makes it illegal to intentionally remove or alter any copyright management information or to distribute copies of works knowing that copyright information has been removed or altered without authority of the copyright owner or the law. “Copyright management information” includes information conveyed in connection with copies of the work, such as the title and the name of the author.

A recent case from federal court in Florida considered whether this regulation of copyright management information in the DMCA applies only to electronic works intended for distribution over the internet, or whether it applies to more traditional works such as hard copy technical drawings. The court interpreted the DMCA broadly to apply to all kinds of works, whether on the internet or not.

Plaintiff alleged that defendant violated the DMCA by distributing copies of plaintiff’s drawings “knowing that [plaintiff’s] name had been removed therefrom and/or that another entity’s name had been added thereto.” Defendant argued that plaintiff failed to state a claim for a violation of the DMCA because the DMCA only applies to “technological” infringement. Defendant cited to Textile Secrets Intl’l, Inc. v. Ya–Ya Brand, Inc., 524 F.Supp.2d 1184 (C.D.Cal.2007), which found that § 1202(b) “was [not] intended to apply to circumstances that have no relation to the Internet, electronic commerce, automated copyright protections, or management systems, public registers, or other technological measures or processes as contemplated in the DMCA as a whole.” To read it otherwise, the court in that case reasoned, would contradict the “legislative intent behind the DMCA to facilitate electronic and Internet commerce.”

In this case, however, the court noted that other courts, focusing on the plain language of the DMCA, have held differently, and approved the DMCA’s application to non-technological contexts. See Murphy v. Millennium Radio Group LLC, 650 F.3d 295 (3d Cir.2011); Agence France Presse v. Morel, 769 F.Supp.2d 295 (S.D.N.Y.2011). Although in this case, as in Murphy, the legislative history of the DMCA was consistent with defendant’s interpretation, it did not actually contradict it. Instead, Section 1202(b) simply established a cause of action for the removal of, among other things, the name of the author of a work when it has been conveyed in connection with copies of the work.

So the court, as it found it was required to do, considered the statute’s plain meaning before it considered its legislative history. Under that analysis, it held that plaintiff’s allegations were sufficient to a state a claim for violation of the DMCA.

Roof & Rack Products, Inc. v. GYB Investors, LLC, 2014 WL 3183278 (S.D. Fla. July 8, 2014)

Evan Brown is an attorney in Chicago advising clients on matters dealing with copyright, technology, the internet and new media.

Is the Aereo decision a setback for innovation?

One of the big questions preceding the Supreme Court’s decision in the Aereo case earlier this week was whether a holding against Aereo would put cloud services into such a legally precarious position that the innovation and investment climate would chill. While the decision clearly makes Aereo’s use of its technology illegal, one should not be too quick to foretell a drastic impact on all hosted services. Here are some reasons why.

What cloud?

Let’s be clear about what we mean by “the cloud” in this context. Aereo’s technical model – which the court found to infringe copyright – captured over-the-air television content using one tiny antenna per customer, transcoded that content into one copy per customer, which Aereo stored and then streamed on-demand to the customer. The court found that model bore an “overwhelming likeness to the cable companies targeted by the [1976 Copyright Act]” to an extent that Aereo was “for all practical purposes a traditional cable system.” Aereo’s technological attempts such as the one-copy-per-customer method that it used to distinguish itself from traditional cable services were immaterial to the court. Aereo looked like a cable company, so the court treated it as one, with all the copyright consequences that go along with that status.

Aereo was a cloud service inasmuch as it stored the TV content and served it to its users when those users initiated the performances. It was the cable-like functions that got it into trouble, not necessarily the cloud-provider functions. That arguably leaves the rest of what we consider cloud services – online collaboration tools, centralized communications systems, most hosted applications, and the like – outside the scope of the court’s decision. Most software-as-a-service models, whether to the consumer or at the enterprise level, are unlike cable systems and thus likely stand clear of the sweep of the Aereo sickle.

The technology could live on.

One must also be sure to recognize that the court’s decision did not kill the technology altogether, but instead killed the use of the technology in the hands of one who does not have ownership or license to the content being delivered. Since the court found that Aereo’s service was “substantially similar” to cable systems, Aereo, its successors, or other players in the space could look to monetize the technology while paying the compulsory licenses that Section 111 of the Copyright Act spells out in dizzying complexity. Or the broadcasters and other content stakeholders could acquire Aereo-like technology and use it to supplement the other means of content delivery currently at play. In either scenario, the needs for investment and innovation in providing infrastructure (as well as the need for clarity on network neutrality) remain firmly intact.

The real likely effect.

This is not to say that Aereo will have no effect on development of technology in areas outside the particular facts of the case. The court’s decision expands the class of online intermediaries who may be liable for direct copyright infringement. In that respect, the case differs from other important technology-provider copyright cases like the Betamax case, Grokster and the Cablevision case. In those cases, the main question before the courts was whether the providers were secondarily liable for the infringement committed by their users. In Aereo, however, the question was whether Aereo itself was liable for infringement committed by providing the technology to others. The Supreme Court held that Aereo was a direct infringer because its functionality so closely resembled a cable company.

So the court has given copyright plaintiffs some new, additional angles to consider when pursuing infringement litigation against technology providers. Does the technology so resemble the technical model of a cable delivery system, particularly from the perspective of the end user, such that it de facto publicly performs the works delivered by the system? If so, then the Aereo test forbids it. Moreover, the case fuzzies the relatively bright line that began to be drawn almost 20 years ago with Religious Technology Center v. Netcom, requiring that for an internet intermediary to be liable for direct infringement, it need undertake some volitional conduct in furtherance of the infringement. That fuzziness will no doubt embolden some plaintiffs who otherwise would not have seen the potential for a cause of action against future defendant-innovators.

In reality, few platforms are likely to actually get “Aereoed” in litigation. The ones at greatest risk will be those that facilitate access to streaming content provided by others. But the fact that ultimate liability may not lie against a provider will likely do little to stop aggressive copyright plaintiffs from trying out the theory against all forms of remote storage providers. That’s the problem Justice Scalia identified in his dissent when he said the decision “will sow confusion for years to come.” Let’s hope that’s mostly an overstatement.

Evan Brown is an attorney in Chicago advising clients on matters dealing with technology, the internet and new media.

No infringement means no injunction in software dispute

Former members of a limited liability company, who participated in the development of four pieces of software while a part of the company, sued the LLC and its remaining members for copyright infringement. Defendants moved for summary judgment, arguing that plaintiffs’ infringement claims must fail because defendants had not used the allegedly copyrighted software outside of the licensing agreements the LLC signed while plaintiffs were still with the company. The court granted defendants’ summary judgment motion.

Plaintiffs agreed that the software had not been used outside the license agreements with companies the LLC had entered while plaintiffs were with the company. But plaintiffs still sought injunctive relief with respect to their infringement claims.

To demonstrate copyright infringement, plaintiffs were required to prove “(1) ownership of a valid copyright, and (2) copying of constituent elements of the work that are original.” Feist Publ’ns, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co., 499 U.S. 340, 362, 111 S.Ct. 1282, 113 L.Ed.2d 358 (1991)). In this case, plaintiffs essentially conceded that the second element of the Feist test was not met.

The court cited Arista Records, LLC v. Doe 3, 604 F.3d 110, 117 (2d. Cir.2010)) to note that in the second Feist element, “the word copying is shorthand for the infringing of any of the copyright owner’s five exclusive rights described in 17 U.S.C. § 106”. Those exclusive rights allow the owner to: (1) reproduce the copyrighted work; (2) prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work; (3) distribute copies of the copyrighted work; (4) perform the work publicly; and (5) display the copyrighted work. Because plaintiffs conceded that defendants had not used the software outside of the license agreements with its customers that were made while plaintiffs were still a part of the LLC, defendants had not infringed on plaintiffs purported exclusive rights.

Plaintiffs nevertheless claimed that they were entitled to injunctive relief to prevent defendants’ potential future use of the copyrighted software. Plaintiffs were required to show that: (1) they had suffered an irreparable injury; (2) that remedies at law were inadequate to compensate that injury; (3) that the balance of hardships warranted a remedy in equity in favor of plaintiffs; and (4) that the public interest would not be disserved by a permanent injunction.

Here, plaintiffs conceded that they had not suffered an injury – the copyrights had not been infringed. Instead, plaintiffs were arguing for a prospective injunction to prevent defendants from infringing upon a copyright for which there was no evidence defendants intended to infringe. The court denied the injunction, holding that a prospective injunction could be entered only on the basis of current, ongoing conduct that threatened future harm.

Brightharbour Consulting, LLC v. Docuconsulting, LLC, 2014 WL 1415186 (N.D.Ga. April 14, 2014)

Evan Brown is an attorney in Chicago, advising clients in technology transactions, intellectual property disputes, and other matters involving the internet and new media.