Posts Tagged: "DMCA Section 512"

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on Wednesday affirmed a district court’s comprehensive order finding that Day to Day Imports, Inc. (DDI) acted with willful blindness in submitting a fifth Takedown Notice to Amazon asking that auto stickers it alleged infringed its licensed artwork be removed from the site. DDI took a license in 2016 to the copyright for artwork created by Harold Walters for a set of replacement stickers for the dashboard climate controls for certain General Motors vehicles. In 2018, Alper Automotive, Inc. began selling a sticker that DDI alleged infringed the licensed copyright. DDI sent Takedown Notices to Alper on May 8, 2018; May 15, 2018; August 2, 2018; and November 1, 2018.

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.

Last week, during the International Trademark Association’s (INTA’s) all-virtual 2020 Annual Meeting & Leadership Meeting, panelists Naomi Jane Gray, Axel Nordemann and Catherine Zaller Rowland discussed perspectives in Copyright Law in a session titled “Hot Topics in Copyright: The New and Controversial Landscape.” In particular, the panelists discussed United States and European perspectives on 1) mash-ups, politics and parody, 2) Liability for Platforms and Service Providers, and 3) Useful Articles.

Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing titled “Copyright and the Internet in 2020: Reactions to the Copyright Office’s Report on the Efficacy of 17 U.S.C. § 512 After Two Decades.” House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) began by explaining that the purpose of the hearing was to examine whether Section 512, a key provision of copyright law that guides how copyright and parts of the internet interact with each other, has fared well in today’s digital age. Six witnesses at the hearing presented the Committee with their views on the Copyright Office’s report and recommendations, and the majority concluded that Section 512 is out of balance. The topic is one that the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Intellectual Property has been examining all year.

On May 21, the U.S. Copyright Office published a report on Section 512 of Title 17 of the U.S. Code, which governs limitations on copyright liability to materials published online. Safe harbor provisions in Section 512, which were enacted as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), have allowed online service providers to operate tech platforms without facing liability for infringing content posted on those platforms. While the Copyright Office acknowledges that the careful balance intended to be struck by Section 512 has become unbalanced, to the detriment of rights holders, the report only recommends that Congress fine-tune certain aspects of Section 512 to restore this balance of competing interests.

Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) this week held the first in a series of eight tentative hearings scheduled for this year on the topic of updating and modernizing the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Tillis’ goal is to address changes to the internet since the DMCA was passed in 1998, and by December 2020 to release the text of a draft reform bill for stakeholder comment. Senator Coons pointed out that the IP Subcommittee has been the most active subcommittee on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Tillis said that the process will take place in the same vein as last year’s patent eligibility hearings, which involved gathering extensive input from a variety of stakeholders.

On February 1, 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued a decision in the case, BMG Rights Management LLC v. Cox Communications, Inc. The Fourth Circuit affirmed in part the district court’s granting of summary judgment to BMG on the § 512(a) Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) safe harbor defense. Ultimately, the Fourth Circuit agreed with the district court’s decision that Cox was not entitled to the safe harbor defense, finding that Cox’s 13-strike policy for repeat infringers was effectively no policy at all, and far less than the termination policy required in order to maintain safe harbor protections.

Understanding the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has become increasingly important for companies that want to protect their digital content. The DMCA was created primarily as a solution for service providers such as YouTube that host content uploaded by third parties rather than create their own original content. Service providers benefit from the DMCA because it protects them from liability in the event content uploaded to their site infringes another’s copyrights. While the DMCA addresses a number of copyright issues, the “safe harbor” provision remains one of its most important aspects.