Posts Tagged: "DMCA"

On December 19, Google LLC filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against SerpApi, LLC, alleging violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The suit centers on claims that SerpApi, a “scraping” service, unlawfully circumvents Google’s technological barriers to scrape copyrighted content from its search results pages on a massive scale, thereby profiting from Google’s efforts without compensation.

The U.S. Supreme Court justices today seemed skeptical of Cox Communications’ arguments that it should not be held liable for contributory infringement for failing to terminate internet access to subscribers who were alleged to have committed infringement, but had tough questions for both sides in Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment, Inc.

Imagine a friend borrows your car for a week. He promises to bring it back clean and full of gas. Reasonable enough, until you discover he racked up 1,500 miles because, while he wasn’t using it, he let his cousin run Uber shifts with it and pocketed a cut of the fares. You didn’t agree to that. You agreed to one driver, one purpose. The cousin had no right to free ride on your investment, devalue your property, or make money off your car without permission. Is it theft? Not quite. But it’s a textbook example of “conversion”—getting hold of something legally to use for a specific purpose, then deploying it in a very different manner. That, in essence, is what Zillow stands accused of doing to CoStar: Co-opting photos that CoStar put into public view, without authorization, to drive its own profits. The alleged free ride could cost Zillow nearly $7 billion.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled Friday, August 15, that internet service providers (ISPs) who merely serve as a conduit for service are protected from the requirements of Section 512(h) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) under one of that section’s four safe harbors.Capstone Studios Corp. sought to subpoena Cox Communications, Inc./ CoxCom LLC to obtain the identities of 29 users it claimed to be showing pirated copies of its movie, Fall via BitTorrent. One of the users objected and the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii held that “Cox qualified for one of § 512’s four safe harbors—17 U.S.C. § 512(a)—because Cox merely provided its users with an Internet connection and played no other role in the alleged infringement.”

Intellectual property owners frequently face difficulties getting their work removed from websites run by companies like Google and Apple, and other service providers where users upload infringing material. The service providers may provide forms and contact information for an intellectual property rights owner to contact when infringing material is found on their site. But, even strict adherence to the service provider’s procedures often fails to result in the removal of the infringing material. This leaves IP owners frustrated by a seeming inability to remove infringing content from the Internet.

The U.S. Copyright Office today issued its final rule adopting exemptions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which prohibits circumvention of technological protection measures (TPMs) that control access to copyrighted works. The Office engages in such rulemaking every three years. This is the ninth triennial Section 1201 rulemaking since passage of the DMCA in 1998. Notably, the Office denied a request to add “an exemption for the purpose of conducting ‘trustworthiness’ research on AI systems.”

The House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet met today to hear from a number of witnesses about the intersection of intellectual property rights and consumers’ right to repair products they own. The concerns voiced by witnesses and congress members today centered around harm and cost to consumers as a result of technological protection measures (TPMs) and increased use of IP tools such as design patents to thwart competition for after-market parts.

Real estate data firm CoStar and real estate digital marketplace CREXi are currently engaged in a high-profile intellectual property fight. Costar, which runs Apartments.com, alleges that CREXi is violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by using its images on Crexi.com without regard to its terms of service. The company has gone so far as to say that “CREXi is attempting to build its own online commercial real estate marketplace and auction platform by free-riding on CoStar’s billions of dollars of investments and the thirty-plus years of hard work by CoStar’s employees.” CrEXi, on the other hand, argues that all the images on the site are uploaded at brokers’ (not CrEXi’s) direction and thus the company can’t be held liable for IP violations. 

Recently, Netflix released a documentary titled, “The Most Hated Man on the Internet,” which is about anti-revenge porn activists and their efforts to take down the website, IsAnyoneUp.com. The site was founded by Hunter Moore and allowed anyone to anonymously upload nude photos with social media handles or to submit sexually explicit photos of others without their consent. The documentary follows Charlotte Laws, whose daughter’s photos were shared on the site, as she launches a campaign to shut it down.

On August 18, 2022, Albert Pujols hit a grand slam against Austin Gomber for his 690th career home run. A clip of that home run was posted on Reddit before the official Major League Baseball (MLB) app was updated. Three years ago, the post would have been taken down quickly. Today, it has thousands of fans commenting on it instead. In 2020, MLB reversed course on a long-established content policy by going beyond simply allowing fans to post clips and highlights of MLB games. They introduced Film Room, a product that lets fans search clips, make reels, and post them to social media. This decision was made with intent – to take back control over how its media was being used online. “I think we’re at the point now where we believe that making our content available for our fans, particularly our younger fans, in a way that’s easy for them to consume, is really important,” Chris Marinak, MLB’s chief operations and strategy officer told Sporting News.

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California this week ruled that the safe harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) protects Pinterest from a photographer’s claim that the platform infringed his copyrights by displaying his works alongside advertisements in the form of “promoted pins.” Harold Davis, an artist and professional photographer, claimed that Pinterest infringed 51 of his copyrighted works. In one example, Davis’ work, “Kiss from a Rose,” was displayed next to a promoted Pin for an art print called “White Tea Roses by Neicy Frey,” which Davis contended constituted unauthorized commercial use of his work.

A recent recommendation by the U.S. Copyright Office allowing for the bypassing of technological protection measures (TPMs) in medical devices for purposes of repair, maintenance and service has been adopted and immediately put into effect. This is bad news for patient safety. At a time when we’re loudly and publicly debating the relative merits of the Build Back Better Act, the U.S. Copyright Office’s announcement, deep inside the Federal Register and written in very user unfriendly dense government jargon, landed not with a bang, but with a whimper. On purpose. Hiding in plain sight. This terrible ruling offered without a comment period or any other appeals mechanism, will have a profoundly negative impact on America’s public health.

On September 27, the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) and online game platform provider Roblox announced that the two parties had settled ongoing copyright litigation in the Central District of California over Roblox’s unauthorized use of copyrighted music on its online gaming platform. The settlement also creates an opt-in mechanism for eligible NMPA publishers and opens a negotiation period for individual publishers to engage Roblox in go-forward licensing deals.

On December 28, Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), Chair of the Senate IP Subcommittee, and Senator Chris Coons (D-DE), Ranking Member of the Senate IP Subcommittee, sent another letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey expressing disappointment over the company’s continued refusal to cooperate on hearings around copyright reform. Tillis and Coons were joined by Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI), as they often are on IP issues. The letter reiterated the senators’ frustration that Twitter refused to provide a witness for the IP Subcommittee hearing on December 15 focused on the role existing technology plays in curbing online piracy. In an all too kind characterization, the letter sent by Senators Tillis, Coons and Hirono also expressed disappointment with the “incomplete responses to written questions sent by Chairman Tillis in advance of the hearing.” Frankly, the “answers” to the questions presented by Chairman Tillis by Dorsey for the record were completely non-responsive. Indeed, Dorsey demonstrated complete disinterest in substantive engagement, an absolute lack of good faith, and conscious disregard—near contempt really—for the duty of candor owed by witnesses to the Subcommittee.