New Decision In Dancing Baby DMCA Takedown Case -- And Everything Is Still A Mess

from the didn't-really-fix-anything dept

I got very excited yesterday when I saw a court system alert that there was a new decision out in the appeal of Lenz v. Universal. This was the Dancing Baby case where a toddler rocking out to a Prince song was seen as such an affront to Prince's exclusive rights in his songs that his agent Universal Music felt it necessary to send a DMCA takedown notice to YouTube to have the video removed. Heaven forbid people share videos of their babies dancing to unlicensed music.

Of course, they shouldn't need licenses, because videos like this one clearly make fair use of the music at issue. So Stephanie Lenz, whose video this was, through her lawyers at the EFF, sued Universal under Section 512(f) of the DMCA for having wrongfully caused her video to be taken down.

Last year, the Ninth Circuit heard the case on appeal and then in September issued a decision that generally pleased no one. Both Universal and Lenz petitioned for the Ninth Circuit to reconsider the decision en banc. En banc review was particularly important because the decision suggested that the panel felt hamstrung by the Ninth Circuit's earlier decision in Rossi v. MPAA, a decision which had the effect of making it functionally impossible for people whose content had been wrongfully taken down to ever successfully sue the parties who had caused that to happen.

Although the updated language exorcises some unhelpful, under-litigated ideas that suggested automated takedown systems could be a "valid and good faith" way of processing takedowns while considering fair use, the new, amended decision does little to remediate any of the more serious underlying problems from the last version. The one bright spot from before fortunately remains: the Ninth Circuit has now made clear that fair use is something that takedown notice senders must consider before sending them. But as for what happens when they don't, or what happens when they get it wrong, that part is still a confusing mess. The reissued decision doubles-down on the contention from Rossi that a takedown notice sender must have just a subjectively reasonable belief – not an objectively reasonable one – that the content in question is infringing. And, according to the majority of the three-judge panel (there was a dissent), it is for a jury to decide whether that belief was reasonable.

The fear from September remains that there is no real deterrent to people sending wrongful takedown notices that cause legitimate, non-infringing speech to be removed from the Internet. It is expensive and impractical to sue to be compensated for the harm this censorship causes, and having to do it before a jury, with an extremely high subjective standard, makes doing so even more unrealistic.

It's possible that the Ninth Circuit may actually see the plaintiff as having been vindicated here; after all, she may still go to a jury and be awarded damages to compensate her, potentially even for the attorneys' fees expended in fighting this fight. But note that the issue of whether she is due anything, and, if so, how much, has not yet been fully litigated, despite this case having been going on since 2007! Not everyone whose content is removed is as tenacious as Ms. Lenz or her EFF counsel, and not everyone can even begin to fight the fight when their content is unjustly removed.

Furthermore, sometimes the value in having speech posted on the Internet comes from having it posted *then*. No amount of compensation can truly make up for the effect of the censorship on a speaker's right to be heard when he or she wanted to be heard. Consider, as we are in the thick of election season, what happens when election-related speech is taken down shortly before a vote. As was pointed out in several amicus briefs in support of the en banc rehearing, including one I filed on behalf of the Organization of Transformative Works and Public Knowledge, such DMCA-enabled censorship has happened before.

Suing won't solve that problem, but at least the threat of a lawsuit might make someone think twice before sending a wrongful takedown notice. But if a lawsuit isn't a realistic possibility then that deterrence won't happen. What the parties supporting the plaintiff have been worried about is that the DMCA allows for an unprecedented form of censorship we would not normally allow. Think about it: if there were no DMCA then people who wanted content removed from the Internet would have to file well-pleaded and well-substantiated lawsuits articulating why the content in question was so wrongful that an injunction compelling its removal was justified in the face of any defense. In other words, without the DMCA, the question of fair use would get considered, and it would get considered by a judge.

But thanks to the DMCA would-be censors can save the time, cost, and burden of having to make sure they got the fair use question right before causing content to be removed – and very likely with a complete lack of judicial oversight to hold them to account if they didn't. No judge may ever scrutinize their decision to ensure that they didn't abuse the shortcut to censorship to the DMCA affords them. Instead, Thursday's decision only further ensures that this sort of abuse will continue unabated.

Filed Under: 512(f), 512f, 9th circuit, automated takedowns, copyright, dancing baby, dmca, fair use, stephanie lenz, takedowns
Companies: universal music, youtube

Pissed Consumer Gets To Go After Roca Labs For Its Bogus DMCA Takedowns

from the well,-this-could-be-interesting dept

Remember Roca Labs? The somewhat shady manufacturer of some goop that the company claimed was an "alternative to gastric bypass surgery." This was the company that initially sued the site PissedConsumer.com because it was hosting negative reviews of Roca's product -- and Roca claimed that because it pressured buyers into a gag clause saying they wouldn't say anything bad about the product, that PissedConsumer was engaged in tortious interference. There was a lot more as well, including threatening to sue us at Techdirt (more than once!) for reporting on the case, suing Pissed Consumer's lawyer Marc Randazza for defamation and a variety of other shenanigans (even including some bizarre side stories on Nevada politics, despite it being a Florida company). Anyway, late last year the FTC smacked down Roca for its misleading marketing and its non-disparagement clauses. Roca is still fighting that fight, but soon after it also lost the case against PissedConsumer.

However, there was (yet another) separate legal fight that didn't get much attention in all of this. In late 2014, we had reported that, in continuing with its efforts to hide any negative reviews, Roca Labs had sent a clearly bogus DMCA takedown to Google (see it here), claiming that the reviews on PissedConsumer's site violated its copyrights. What I had not realized was PissedConsumer actually had filed a separate lawsuit against Roca back in January of 2015, focused solely on these bogus DMCA takedowns, arguing that they had violated the infamous DMCA 512(f) clause on bogus takedowns.

As we've noted, 512(f) cases are rarely successful, as courts don't seem to care much about them, and the law is written in such a manner that it's usually pretty easy to dance around a claim of "misrepresentation" in a DMCA takedown. And, in this case, the court dismissed the case, by basically saying that it was really nothing more than a counterclaim in the other, original, case filed by Roca. However, in a somewhat surprising move (actually, very surprising), the court has now agreed that the decision to dismiss the case was a mistake, and that this is a separate issue from the original case, and not a counterclaim. The reasoning is somewhat technical and procedural, but at the very least, it appears that the case against Roca for abusing the DMCA is back on track.

Filed Under: 512(f), copyright, takedown
Companies: pissed consumer, roca labs

Big, Confusing Mess Of A Fair Use Decision Over DMCA Takedowns

from the wait,-what? dept

Some potentially good news this morning -- which may be undermined by the fine print. After many years of back and forth, the 9th Circuit appeals court has ruled that Universal Music may have violated the DMCA in not taking fair use into account before issuing a DMCA takedown request on a now famous YouTube video of Stephanie Lenz's infant dancing to less than 30 seconds of a Prince song playing in the background. Because of this, there can now be a trial over whether or not Universal actually had a good faith belief that the video was not fair use. This case has been going on forever, and if you've watched the video, it's kind of amazing that a key case on fair use should be focused on that particular video, where you can barely even make out the music. The key question was whether or not Universal abused the DMCA in not first considering fair use before sending the takedown. This is fairly important, because, of course, DMCA takedowns suppress speech and if fair use is supposed to be the "pressure valve" that stops copyright from violating the First Amendment, it has to actually mean something. Section 512(f) of the DMCA says that the filer of a DMCA notice may be liable for damages for "misrepresentations," but historically that has been an almost entirely toothless part of the law (in part because of earlier rulings in the Lenz case). People hoped that would change with this ruling, and while the beginning of the ruling suggests 512(f) is getting teeth, the end yanks them all away.

The ruling in the 9th Circuit starts out great, but starts getting iffy pretty fast.

Her claim boils down to a question of whether copyright holders have been abusing the extrajudicial takedown procedures provided for in the DMCA by declining to first evaluate whether the content qualifies as fair use. We hold that the statute requires copyright holders to consider fair use before sending a takedown notification, and that failure to do so raises a triable issue as to whether the copyright holder formed a subjective good faith belief that the use was not authorized by law.

Sounds good, right? Anyone sending a DMCA notice needs to take fair use into account before sending a takedown. That may be trouble for all of those automated takedown filing systems out there, many of which we've written about. The court also reiterates that fair use is not "allowed infringement," but rather it's not infringement at all. This is also important (even though it says that directly in the law, many people pretend that it's just an "allowed" infringement). The court is not impressed by Universal Music's defense in the case, in which it argues that fair use is "not authorized by law" because, as Universal falsely claims, it is merely a "defense" to infringement. The court says that's wrong:

Universal’s interpretation is incorrect as it conflates two different concepts: an affirmative defense that is labeled as such due to the procedural posture of the case, and an affirmative defense that excuses impermissible conduct. Supreme Court precedent squarely supports the conclusion that fair use does not fall into the latter camp: “[A]nyone who . . . makes a fair use of the work is not an infringer of the copyright with respect to such use.”

So, that's all good. But... the details matter, and from that point on... they're weird. The court points to the earlier ruling, saying that the copyright holder "need only form a subjective good faith belief that a use is not authorized." Thus, as long as the issuer can come up with some sort of argument for why they didn't think it was fair use, they're probably safe.

As a result, Lenz’s request to impose a subjective standard only with respect to factual beliefs and an objective standard with respect to legal determinations is untenable.

And because of that, the court leaves a big out for just about any copyright holder. It says the court has no place in questioning how the copyright holder decided whether the use was authorized or not:

To be clear, if a copyright holder ignores or neglects our unequivocal holding that it must consider fair use before sending a takedown notification, it is liable for damages under § 512(f). If, however, a copyright holder forms a subjective good faith belief the allegedly infringing material does not constitute fair use, we are in no position to dispute the copyright holder’s belief even if we would have reached the opposite conclusion.

The court says a copyright holder can't just "pay lip service" to the idea that it checked on fair use, but in the same paragraph admits that, well, it basically can. Even worse, it says that forming a "good faith belief" doesn't require actually investigating the details:

In order to comply with the strictures of § 512(c)(3)(A)(v), a copyright holder’s consideration of fair use need not be searching or intensive. We follow Rossi’s guidance that formation of a subjective good faith belief does not require investigation of the allegedly infringing content.

So.... huh? (1) You need to take into account if it's fair use or not and you need to show a "good faith belief" that it's fair use, but... (2) you don't actually have to investigate anything, and the court cannot review your reasons for having a good faith belief. That's not a loophole. It's a blackhole that collapses 512(f) in on itself.

From there, it actually notes that automated takedowns... may be fine:

We note, without passing judgment, that the implementation of computer algorithms appears to be a valid and good faith middle ground for processing a plethora of content while still meeting the DMCA’s requirements to somehow consider fair use. Cf. Hotfile, 2013 WL 6336286, at *47 (“The Court . . . is unaware of any decision to date that actually addressed the need for human review, and the statute does not specify how belief of infringement may be formed or what knowledge may be chargeable to the notifying entity.”). For example, consideration of fair use may be sufficient if copyright holders utilize computer programs that automatically identify for takedown notifications content where: “(1) the video track matches the video track of a copyrighted work submitted by a content owner; (2) the audio track matches the audio track of that same copyrighted work; and (3) nearly the entirety . . . is comprised of a single copyrighted work.”

So, uh, what? Automated takedowns may be fine because that's sort of a way to consider fair use because... no reason given. That is not at all helpful.

On a separate note, the court confirms that the trial cannot move forward by arguing that Universal had "willful blindness" about the likelihood of fair use in the case, because Lenz didn't really show that Universal had willful blindness. So that's another dead end.

Finally, the court rejected Universal Music's claim that Lenz had to show monetary damages in order to recover damages under 512(f). The court says 512(f) spans more than just monetary damages. Of course, that's almost entirely meaningless in a world in which everyone has an out through "subjective good faith" that doesn't even require investigating anything.

So this is a ruling that looks good up top, but gets bad as you read the details. There is a dissent, from Judge Milan Smith, pointing out some of the problems with the majority ruling, and the loophole that it creates. As the dissent notes, stating that something is infringing when you haven't done any fair use analysis is a misrepresentation, and 512(f) covers misrepresentations. So, in the end, a possibly important ruling is undermined with a massive loophole, which likely will lead to a continuing barrage of DMCA takedowns, including automated takedowns that suppress speech. That seems... wrong.

Filed Under: 512(f), 512f, 9th circuit, automated takedowns, copyright, dancing baby, dmca, fair use, free speech, good faith belief, stephanie lenz, takedowns

Dancing Babies, The DMCA, Fair Use And Whether Companies Should Pay For Bogus Takedowns

from the still-in-court dept

Earlier this week the Ninth Circuit heard oral arguments in the appeal of Lenz v. Universal. This was the case where Stephanie Lenz sued Universal because Universal had sent YouTube a takedown notice demanding it delete the home movie she had posted of her toddler dancing, simply because music by Prince was audible in the background. It's a case whose resolution has been pending since 2007, despite the fact that it involves the interpretation of a fundamental part of the DMCA's operation.

The portion of the DMCA at issue in this case is Section 512 of the copyright statute, which the DMCA added in 1998 along with Section 1201. As with Section 1201, Section 512 reflects a certain naivete by Congress in thinking any part of the DMCA was a good idea, rather than the innovation-choking and speech- chilling mess it has turned out to be. But looking at the statutory language you can kind of see how Congress thought it was all going to work, what with the internal checks and balances they put into the DMCA to prevent it from being abused. Unfortunately, while even as intended there are some severe shortcomings to how this balance was conceptualized, what's worse is how it has not even been working as designed.

One such problem is with the content takedown system incorporated into Section 512. The point of Section 512 is to make it possible for intermediaries to host the rich universe of online content users depend on intermediaries to host. It does this by shifting the burden of having to police users' content for potential copyright infringement from these intermediaries to copyright owners, who are better positioned to do it. Without this shift more online speech would likely be chilled, either because the fear of being held liable for hosting users' infringing content would prompt intermediaries to over-censor legitimate content, or because the possibility of being held liable for user content would make being an Internet intermediary hosting it too crushingly high a risk to attempt at all.

Copyright owners often grumble about having the policing be their responsibility, but these complaints ignore the awesome power they get in return: by merely sending a takedown notice they are able, without any litigation or court order or third-party review, to cause online speech to be removed from the Internet. It is an awesome power, and it is one that Congress required them to use responsibly. That's why the DMCA includes Section 512(f), as a mechanism to hold wayward parties accountable when they wield this powered unjustifiably.

Unfortunately this is a section of the statute that has lost much of its bite. A 2004 decision by the Ninth Circuit, Rossi v. MPAA, read into the statute a certain degree of equivocation about what the "good faith" requirement of a takedown notice actually demanded. Nonetheless, the statute on its face still requires that a valid takedown notice include a statement that the party sending it 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." (emphasis added)

The big question in this case is what the "or the law" part means in terms of making a takedown notice legitimate. No one is disputing that the notice that took down the dancing baby video was authorized by the agent in charge of administering the rights to Prince's music (at the hearing we learned that this is no longer Universal Music, but it was back then). But copyright is always contextual. In other words, just because someone uses (e.g., by posting to the Internet) a copyrighted work does not mean they have automatically infringed that work's copyright. There may well be circumstances enabling that use, like a license (including a statutory or compulsory license), or fair use.

Whether the "or the law" part included authorization pursuant to fair use is what a significant part of the hearing addressed. Universal said that it didn't, arguing that fair use was only an affirmative defense. By "affirmative defense" Universal meant that fair use was just something you could argue as a defense to being accused of copyright infringement in a lawsuit but not something that existed more integrally as part of copyright law itself. As such, Universal argued, it was not necessary to consider it when sending a takedown notice claiming that the use in question was not authorized.

EFF, arguing for Lenz, disagreed, however, arguing that the articulation of fair use in the statute, at 17 U.S.C. § 107, made fair use more than just a defense; rather, it is a statutory limitation constraining the scope of the copyright owner's exclusive rights and just as much a part of the law as the parts enumerating those rights. As a result, the EFF argued, a copyright owner sending a takedown notice always has to consider whether the rights the notice is seeking to vindicate are at all constrained by the sort of use being made of the work. If the copyright owner doesn't do that then it could be subject to the sanctions of 512(f).

Although one can never read the tea leaves from an oral argument, the judges did not seem to buy Universal's argument that fair use was just an affirmative defense. They seemed more persuaded by the EFF's position that it was enough a part of the copyright statute for at least some consideration of it to be required for a takedown notice to be valid. But then the court became concerned with the question of how much consideration was needed. After all, as Universal suggested (and EFF disagreed with), there may even be some question about whether the use of Prince's music in the dancing baby video was itself fair. Fair use is a very squishy thing always dependent on the particular context of a particular use of a copyrighted work. Often it takes massive amounts of litigation to determine whether a use was fair, so the judges spent a lot of time questioning both parties about what a copyright owner (or its agent), if the statute requires them to consider fair use, must actually do on that front in order to not run afoul of the law's requirements when sending takedown notices.

Universal argued that because it (and other similarly situated copyright holders) needed to send millions of takedown notices it would simply be too burdensome to have to consider fair use for each and every one of them. To this the EFF suggested that tools may be available to help triage the likely contenders needing closer analysis, but something else the EFF said I think drives the point home more aptly.

The DMCA also includes a "put back" process, at Section 512(g), so that Internet users' whose content has wrongfully been removed can have it replaced. Universal argued that this process should be enough to deal with any wrongful takedowns, as it allows for wrongfully removed content to be replaced. (Universal also argued that this "put back" notice was also necessary to give the copyright holder notice that fair use might be an issue to consider.) But if this were the case then why have a Section 512(f) in the statute at all? There is nothing in the statute that suggests that a "put back" notice needs to happen for Section 512(f) to be able to operate. Furthermore, although the record in this case was unfortunately poor as to what percentage of removed content was ever put back pursuant to 512(g) put back notices, as the EFF noted, even if it were a very small percentage of removed content, a small percentage of millions of instances suggests that quite a bit of non-infringing content is still getting removed.

Moreover, there is no reason to suspect that the content that has been restored in response to these put back notices represents the entire universe of wrongfully removed content. There is little basis to presume that everyone else who had their content removed simply shrugged it off as a fair cop. Because a put back notice can conspicuously put a user in the line of fire of a copyright owner many users might not have wanted to tempt the trouble. Also, as the EFF observed, the DMCA takedown system is fairly labyrinth and often needs the assistance of counsel to help navigate it. This form of support is likely not available to most, and even in the case of Ms. Lenz it did not readily result in her home video of her kid dancing being restored.

Ultimately Universal is arguing that this outcome is ok: despite this harm to legitimate speech, copyright owners should nonetheless be entitled to cause millions and millions of instances of user-generated content to disappear from the Internet with very little effort, inconvenience, or oversight on their part. But it's an argument that fails to recognize just what a privilege the takedown system represents. It is a huge shortcut, giving private parties the extraordinary power to be censors over Internet content without the trouble and expense of a lawsuit to first determine whether their rights have truly been infringed. With the DMCA copyright owners become judge, jury, and executioner over other people's speech all on their own, and when they decide to sentence content for disappearance they get to use the takedown notice as the gun to the head of the intermediary to force it do the deed.

Universal spent a lot of time arguing that the DMCA was intended to be this sort of shortcut in order to be a "rapid response" system to online infringements. But the "rapid response" the DMCA offers is that copyright owners don't first have to go to court. Nothing in statute suggests copyright owners are entitled to a response so rapid that they are excused from exercising the appropriate care a valid takedown notice requires – or that even a lawsuit would require. As Universal would have it, they get to be censors over other people's speech without any of the risk normally involved if they had to use the courts to vindicate their rights. Note that nothing in the DMCA precludes a copyright owner from suing an Internet user who has infringed its copyright. But with a lawsuit comes the risk that a copyright owner might have to pay the fees and costs of the defendant should their claims of infringement found unmeritorious (including because the targeted use was fair). According to Universal, however, copyright owners should face no similar consequence should the claims underpinning their takedown notices be similarly specious. Copyright owners should simply be able to cause content to be deleted at will, with no risk of any penalty to them for being wrong.

But that's not what the statute says. As was also argued at the hearing, Section 512(f) creates the penalty necessary to deter wrongful takedowns because without there being one, all the risk of the takedown system would be borne by those whose free speech rights (both to speak freely and to freely consume what others have said) are undermined by copyright owners' glib censorship. As the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility, and it hardly misconstrues Congress's intent, or the express language of the statute, to demand copyright owners to carefully exercise that responsibility before letting their takedown notices fly, and to sanction them when they don't.

Filed Under: 512(f), abuse, copyright, dancing baby, dmca, fair use, stephanie lenz, takedowns
Companies: eff, universal music

Wordpress Wins Case Against DMCA Abuser... Who Ignored The Proceedings

from the it's-a-start dept

Back in the summer of 2013, we wrote about yet another case of someone abusing the DMCA to censor content, rather than for any legitimate copyright purpose. The story was quite ridiculous, involving a group in the UK, called "Straight Pride UK." The group did an interview with a student named Oliver Hotham, who had emailed the group, noting he was a journalist with a list of questions. The guy behind "Straight Pride UK," Nick Steiner, responded to the questions with a document, which the group labeled as a "press release." Hotham posted his article, which, quite reasonably, made Straight Pride UK look ridiculous. In response, the group issued a DMCA takedown notice to Automattic, the company behind Wordpress.com, and the host of the article.

A couple months later, the legal team at Automattic decided it had had enough of these kinds of bogus takedowns and filed two lawsuits concerning bogus takedowns, including Nick Steiner's. As we've noted for years, the DMCA does have section 512(f) which allows for some punishment for bogus DMCA takedowns, but in practice, 512(f) has been almost entirely neutered by the courts. Yet here were cases of clear abuse.

So it's good to see that the court in the Hotham/Automattic/Steiner case has now ruled for Wordpress and awarded $25,084.00. Unfortunately, Steiner has more or less ignored the entire case, so it is really a default judgment. And, assuming Steiner never comes to the US, it may not ever truly impact him, and it's doubtful that he'll pay up. Still, at the very least, it's nice to see some sort of victory against bogus DMCA takedowns, given that it is so rare.

Filed Under: 512(f), 512f, censorship, copyright, dmca, nick steiner, oliver hotham, wordpress
Companies: automattic, wordpress

'Anarcho-Capitalist' Stefan Molyneux Sued For Abusing The DMCA

from the state-violence-in-response-to-state-violence? dept

A few months ago, we wrote about the strange saga of self-described "anarcho-capitalist" Stefan Molyneux more or less admitting that he and a colleague named Michael DeMarco had filed questionable DMCA notices in response to some critical YouTube videos. DeMarco and Molyneux defended the use of the DMCA by arguing that the videos involved doxxing some Molyneux supporters. While that may have been true of some, it did not appear to be the case with one account, from so-called "Tru Shibes," whose videos were pretty focused on criticizing Molyneux himself. Either way, we found it especially bizarre that someone so against "state violence" of any kind (and who had spoken out against intellectual property entirely) would then resort to abusing government-run copyright law to silence criticism. Even worse, Molyneux flat out admitted (on a Joe Rogan podcast) that he wasn't using the DMCA for any copyright-related purpose. In that post, I noted that it seemed unlikely to lead to a lawsuit, but Molyneux had probably opened himself up to a DMCA 512(f) claim for "materially misrepresenting" a copyright claim.

Apparently, I underestimated the person behind the Tru Shibes account, because late last week, she sued Molyneux (pdf) with a 512(f) claim, and a defamation claim as well. The plaintiff, who only identifies herself as "J. Raven," describes in detail the critique videos she had created, challenging some of Molyneux's statements. But the overall point of the lawsuit is to highlight the (admitted) abuse of the DMCA. The defamation claim is in response to Molyneux implying that Tru Shibes was engaged in doxxing Molyneux supporters. The filing details how Molyneux/DeMarco clearly did not use the DMCA for copyright purposes, but to silence a critic. It further details how even if there was a copyright claim, Tru Shibes' use was clearly fair use. And that brings us to the 512(f) claim:

On information and belief, Defendants knew that the critique videos did not infringe their copyright when they sent YouTube the takedown notices. Defendants acted in bad faith when they sent the takedown notices, knowingly and materially misrepresenting that they had concluded the critique videos were infringing.

In the alternative, Defendants should have known, if they had acted with reasonable care or diligence, that the critique videos did not infringe Defendants’ copyright on the date it sent YouTube its complaints under the DMCA.

Then there's the defamation claim:

Plaintiff is informed, believes, and thereon alleges that Defendants published false, non-privileged, and defamatory statements regarding Plaintiff with the intent to injure and damage Plaintiff’s reputation and to interfere with and to disrupt Plaintiff’s existing and prospective relationships.

The published statements falsely accused Plaintiff of doxing Defendant Molyneux’s listeners and/or other people.

Plaintiff is informed, believes, and thereon alleges that Defendants expressly attempted to damage Plaintiff’s reputation in order to punish Plaintiff and disrupt and cause damage to her personally and to her Tru Shibes YouTube channel.

Frankly, the defamation claim is pretty weak, and I'd be surprised if that gets anywhere. There could be some argument over whether or not Tru Shibes / J. Raven is a "public figure" (higher standard for defamation), but the fact that she's producing videos on YouTube probably makes her a public figure for this purpose. That would mean that she would need to show that Molyneux's statements about the doxxing were done with "actual malice." It's not clear that's the case, as it seems more likely he was just using the doxxing excuse to try to explain why he and DeMarco had used the DMCA.

Where the case is a lot more interesting, of course, is the 512(f) claim. As we've discussed repeatedly, 512(f) claims are really difficult, because the courts have interpreted that clause very, very narrowly. However, here you have a case where the person using the DMCA has basically gone out of his way to admit that he's abusing the DMCA for non-copyright reasons to silence speech he doesn't like. If this can't win a 512(f) claim, it would prove pretty conclusively that 512(f) is completely broken and needs to be fixed.

Filed Under: 512(f), 512f, copyright, defamation, dmca, j. raven, stefan molyneux, tru shibes

Warner Bros. Admits To Issuing Bogus Takedowns; Gloats To Court How There's Nothing Anyone Can Do About That

from the too-bad,-suckers dept

One of the bizarre side notes to Hollywood's big lawsuit against the cyberlocker Hotfile was a countersuit against Warner Bros. by Hotfile, for using the easy takedown tool that Hotfile had provided, to take down a variety of content that was (a) non-infringing and (b) had nothing to do with Warner Bros. at all (i.e., the company did not hold the copyright on those files). In that case, WB admitted that it filed a bunch of false takedowns, but said it was no big deal because it was all done by a computer. Of course, it then came out that at least one work was taken down by a WB employee, and that employee had done so on purpose, annoyed that JDownloader could help possible infringers download more quickly.

As we've noted many times in the past, there is almost no real punishment for filing false takedowns. The "penalty of perjury" language appears to only apply to the question of whether or not the person filing the takedown actually represents the party they claim to represent -- and not whether the file is infringing at all, or even whether or not the file's copyright is held by the party being represented. And, in the lawsuit, Warner Bros. is relying on that to try to avoid getting hit with a perjury claim. Basically, the company is saying: sure, sure, we lied and pulled down content we had no right to pull down, but the law is so laughably weak and in our favor that screw you all, it doesn't matter what we take down. While WB actually did "agree" to a more strict perjury clause in agreeing to Hotfile's terms, it's now arguing that the terms it agreed to don't count because they're different from the DMCA:

Hotfile first argues that the language on its website substantially complied with the DMCA and because Warner “was not the owner or authorized by the owner of the materials to issue the takedown notices,” its takedown notices contained false statements under penalty of perjury. Opp. at 3. But Hotfile’s argument is a sleight of hand that would transform every mistaken notice sent to Hotfile into a false statement under penalty of perjury. The sender of a takedown notice who mistakes a file for an infringing copy of its work is never the “owner or authorized by the owner” of what the file actually is. But the DMCA expressly does not require the sender of a notice to certify under penalty of perjury that they have correctly identified the complained-of file as one of their works. A takedown notice’s “[i]dentification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed” is not made under penalty of perjury. 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3)(A)(ii). A statement under penalty of perjury, under the DMCA, applies only to the claim to represent the copyright owner of the specific right alleged to be infringed, i.e. instances in which a copyrighted work is identified by a notice and the issuer falsely claims to be the representative entitled to take down the work so identified. See 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3)(A)(vi). Hotfile makes no accusation, and has no evidence, that Warner ever falsely claimed to be acting on behalf of the true copyright owners of the files it accidentally took down (e.g., that Warner, instead of misidentifying files as its own, ever identified them as the works of other copyright owners, but then claimed to represent those other owners).

On the legal analysis, Warner Bros. may actually be correct here -- but it only serves to highlight how weak and ineffectual the DMCA 512(f) is, in that it's basically impossible to punish anyone who ever takes down legitimate content with a bogus takedown. As you read the filing, WB appears to be almost gloating that the way copyright law is written, it can take down whatever it wants, and if you don't like it, well, go shove the DMCA up your... and good luck.

If ever there was evidence that there needs to be real teeth behind punishment for filing bogus DMCA notices, it seems like this case should be exhibit number one.

Filed Under: 512(f), 512f, dmca, jdownloader, perjury, takedowns
Companies: hotfile, warner bros.

Larry Lessig Threatened With Copyright Infringement Over Clear Fair Use; Decides To Fight Back

from the bad-ideas:-threatening-larry-lessig-with-a-copyright-infringement-lawsuit dept

If you read Techdirt, you're almost certainly familiar with Larry Lessig, the law professor at Harvard who (among many other things) has been an avid advocate for copyright reform and campaign finance reform, an author of many books about copyright and creativity, a well-known public speaker whose presentations are stunningly compelling, entertaining and informative, and the founder of some important organizations including Creative Commons. Of course, as an expert on copyright and creativity, and someone who's actually been involved in some of the key copyright legal fights over the past decade (tragically, on the losing side), you might think that a record label would think twice before issuing a clearly bogus threat to sue him over copyright infringement. Well, apparently Liberation Music was either unaware of Lessig's reputation and knowledge, or just didn't care.

Apparently, back in 2010, Lessig gave one of his many wonderful public talks, this one called "Open," at a Creative Commons event in South Korea. While that happened a few years ago, Lessig just put video of that talk online a few months ago. In that video, which is now down (for reasons explained below), there are a few brief clips of the Phoenix song Lisztomania, which was quite popular a few years ago. When the clip was posted, it appears that YouTube's ContentID noted two possible claims: one from Viacom and one from Liberation Music, though, oddly, Lessig was only informed about the Viacom one. Lessig disputed the Viacom block, but as YouTube was about to restore the video, Liberation Music took it one step further, and filed a full DMCA claim, demanding the video be taken down and kept offline (while many people confuse them, the ContentID match is not the same thing as a DMCA claim -- without getting into the details, the DMCA claim is a bit more serious).

In response, Lessig did exactly what the law allows, and filed a DMCA counter-notice, claiming that the work did not infringe. In response, Liberation emailed Lessig directly telling him that it would be filing a copyright infringement lawsuit against him in 72 hours if he did not "retract" his counter-notice. To avoid having an immediate lawsuit on his hands, Lessig retracted the notice, but since then has teamed up with the EFF to file for declaratory judgment that the video does not infringe and (more importantly) to seek DMCA 512(f) damages against Liberation for filing a totally bogus DMCA takedown notice.

There are a few things worth digging into here. For example, this is not the first time that Lessig has had videos removed from YouTube on highly questionable copyright claims. In fact, we've written about it happening twice before. However, I'm pretty sure that, in both cases, after Lessig countered the claims, the videos were restored. In both cases, it really looked like part of an automatic takedown, where the companies later realized there was nothing worth pursuing. What's different (and stunning) here is that Liberation decided to press forward with the obviously bogus claim, file the DMCA notice and threaten to sue if Lessig didn't drop his counternotice.

Next, in terms of the content of the video itself, while the YouTube video is gone because of the DMCA takedown, I'm pretty sure there's another copy here. The Lisztomania clips come in around the 37:50 mark. I wasn't able to fast forward to it, but Lessig has used it in other presentations as well. For example, you can see it in a TEDx presentation that Lessig did a few months earlier, with the key section of that video happening at 4:40 in that video. And what he's showing, actually, is not something that Lessig himself put together, but rather clips from a video that Julian Sanchez had put together -- a video we've written about a few times.

That's because it's a truly fantastic video that Sanchez put together in February of 2010, highlighting how copying was a key part of culture, using a really compelling example: First, there was a mashup video uploaded to YouTube by a user called "avoidant consumer," which mashed up the song Lisztomania by the band Phoenix, with a bunch of (mostly dance) scenes from a variety of John Hughes movies, leading with the classic Breakfast Club. The video is pretty good in a variety of ways. The music is catchy, the film scenes are classic (especially for people who grew up in the 80s), and (most importantly), the video and the music just fit together. I remember that video getting passed around like crazy. The whole thing became a meme.

Part of that meme, as highlighted by Sanchez, was that people of certain "tribes," who really liked that video then created their own versions, starting with a crew of hipsters in Brooklyn, followed quickly by some hipsters in San Francisco, and later by people all over the world. Those later videos no longer used the original John Hughes clips, but rather recreated the same clips within their own environments in a very fun way. Sanchez spoke about this form of culture and community and how the nature of this remix helped to build that community, and how our copyright policy rarely reflects that aspect.

Of course, late last year, Sanchez discovered that his own video had been removed by a copyright claim by Kobalt Music and Sony Music. He appealed, and it was rejected... but after the story got some attention, the clip was put back. If I remember correctly, the video was taken down yet again just a few months ago, but was put back soon after.

Meanwhile, soon after Sanchez put out the video, Lessig used Sanchez's video, again to highlight the power of remix and remix culture. In the South Korea presentation, Lessig is no longer using the same Sanchez video, and has actually expanded upon what Sanchez started, by including a variety of other cities the meme spread to. However, in almost every way, these are all clearly fair use. I'm assuming the Viacom ContentID match that Lessig first received was because of the use of some of the video clips in Lessig's presentation, including (perhaps) one of the John Hughes clips that very briefly show up (the video also includes a Daily Show clip, which Viacom owns -- so it could be about that). The audio claim by Liberation, however, is about the Phoenix audio. Given that, it would be almost impossible to see this as infringing.

While I may be predisposed towards seeing fair use more readily than some others, I'd be curious if any copyright maximalist can come up with a credible argument for how this isn't fair use. It involved some very brief clips used to illustrate a concept, including commentary from Lessig (talking over the clips). It wasn't for any commercial purpose, but for education. There is no way that it harmed the market for the Lisztomania song. If anything, it potentially increased interest in the song. I can't see how Liberation Music has any case at all. At all.

Of course, the really interesting part of this might not be the declaratory judgment claim for non-infringement (where the fair use stuff will play out), but rather the second claim -- for attorneys fees, costs and damages under 512(f). As we've discussed, unfortunately, it's been almost impossible to win a 512(f) claim over a bogus DMCA takedown. The entertainment industry has fought hard to make sure that sending totally bogus DMCA notices that censor content are basically unpunishable, unless they can show a willful and intentional decision to ignore fair use and censor the content. While it's not a slam dunk, it certainly appears that Lessig has a much stronger 512(f) argument here than other cases, because this isn't a one-time situation, but Liberation doubled down even after being told that Lessig believed the video was fair use. On top of that, by filing the lawsuit himself, and seeking the declaratory judgment, instead of being sued first, it means that Liberation can't just dismiss the lawsuit (they're now the defendant, not the plaintiff).

Given that it's Lessig, and with the involvement of the EFF, this is obviously going to be a case worth watching, but given the full details of the case, it may be a key one in establishing when 512(f) can be used to push back against bogus DMCA takedowns.

Filed Under: 512(f), 512f, copyright, dmca, fair use, julian sanchez, larry lessig, lisztomania, phoenix, takedowns
Companies: liberation music