Judge Ignores Congress, Pretends SOPA Exists, Orders Site Blocking Of Sci-Hub

from the how's-that-work-now? dept

Last month, we wrote about the strange and unfortunate decision by a magistrate judge in the copycat lawsuit by the American Chemical Society against Sci-Hub, the "renegade" online repository of academic knowledge. As we've discussed for years, the copyright attacks on Sci-Hub are silly, given the entire stated purpose of copyright is supposed to be to increase "learning" (and there's rarely a monetary incentive to the scholars writing academic articles). Copyright in academic papers is silly for a whole host of reasons, and then using copyright law to take down what is effectively an incredibly useful library of academic knowledge seems to run entirely counter to the basis of copyright law.

And yet, things with Sci-Hub keep getting dumber. After it lost the lawsuit Elsevier filed against it, the American Chemical Society jumped in to file a copy cat lawsuit. The issue last month was our surprise that a magistrate judge recommended an injunction against third parties who were not parties to the lawsuit, demanding that they block all access to Sci-Hub. This could impact tons of ISPs, search engines, domain registrars and more. On Friday, amazingly, the Title III judge on the case, Judge Leonie Brinkema, more or less went with the magistrate's recommendations, with one slight change. You can see the order and injunction either at those links, or embedded below.

Because Sci-Hub -- run by a woman who doesn't live in the US -- chose to ignore the lawsuit, this is a default judgment, so the judge never got to hear anyone else's viewpoint, other than ACS. It's troubling that the judge -- just prior to issuing the injunction -- decided to reject an attempted amicus brief from CCIA, which sought to explain why site blocking is not allowed as a remedy. The judge did make one change, which at the very least improves the injunction slightly. The official injunction reads as follows:

ORDERED that any person or entity in active concert or participation with Defendant Sci-Hub and with notice of the injunction, including any Internet search engines, web hosting and Internet service providers, domain name registrars, and domain name registries, cease facilitating access to any or all domain names and websites through which Defendant Sci-Hub engages in unlawful access to, use, reproduction, and distribution of the ACS Marks or ACS's Copyrighted Works; and it is FURTHER

ORDERED that the domain name registries and/or registrars for Defendant Sci-Hub's domain names and websites, or their technical administrators, shall place the domain names on registryHold/serverHold or other status to render the names/sites non-resolving.

The original recommendation from the magistrate judge said that "any person or entity in privity with Sci-Hub" had to do those things. The difference being switching out "in active concert or participation" rather than "in privity." That's... slightly better, but it's unclear exactly what "in active concert or participation" really means.

ACS is now claiming that this won't apply to general search engines, but just to those working more closely with Sci-Hub:

“The court’s affirmative ruling does not apply to search engines writ large, but only to those entities who have been in active concert or participation with Sci-Hub, such as websites that host ACS content stolen by Sci-Hub. ACS will now look to identify said entities and seek enforcement accordingly.”

Steve McLaughlin, who has been following the case closely, expects that ACS is likely to target Cloudflare with this injunction -- and it will be worth seeing how Cloudflare responds.

Either way, setting aside the questions about why we're even arguing about a library of academic research that was not incentivized by copyright, it's still perplexing that a federal judge believes this is a justifiable remedy. Again, five years ago Congerss explored the idea of allowing site blocking as a remedy for copyright infringement and decided against it when it chose not to pass SOPA/PIPA (whose main purpose was to create a site blocking remedy). No matter what you think of Sci-Hub, it should worry people when judges can demand third parties censor and block sites, without any First Amendment analysis whatsoever.

Filed Under: academic research, copyright, site blocking, sopa
Companies: acs, american chemical society, cloudflare, sci-hub

Shouldn't Federal Judges Understand That Congress Did Not Pass SOPA?

from the hello-prior-restraint dept

We've discussed in the past the completely ridiculous attacks on Sci-Hub, a site that should be celebrated as an incredible repository of all the world's academic knowledge. It's an incredible and astounding achievement... and, instead of celebrating it, we have big publishers attacking it. Because copyright. And even though the purpose of copyright was supposedly to advance "learning" and Sci-Hub serves that purpose amazingly well, so many people have bought into the myth of copyrights must "exclude" usage, that we're in a time where one of the most amazing libraries in the world is being attacked. Sci-Hub lost its big case earlier this year, and almost immediately others piled on. Specifically, back in June, the American Chemical Society (ACS) jumped in with a similar "us too!" lawsuit, knowing full well that Sci-Hub would likely ignore it.

ACS has moved for a default judgment against Sci-Hub (what you tend to get when the defendant ignores the lawsuit), which it would likely get. However, in an extremely troubling move, the magistrate judge reviewing the case for the Article III judge who will make the final ruling has recommended forcing ISPs and search engines to block access to Sci-Hub. After recommending the standard (and expected) injunction against Sci-Hub, the recommendation then says:

In addition, the undersigned recommends that it be ordered that any person or entity in privity with Sci-Hub and with notice of the injunction, including any Internet search engines, web hosting and Internet service providers, domain name registrars, and domain name registries, cease facilitating access to any or all domain names and websites through which Sci-Hub engages in unlawful access to, use, reproduction, and distribution of ACS's trademarks or copyrighted works. Finally, the undersigned recommends that it be ordered that the domain name registries and/or registrars for Sci-Hub's domain names and websites, or their technical administrators, shall place the domain names on registryHold/serverHold or such other status to render the names/sites non-resolving.

So, this is kind of incredible. Because, as you might remember, there was a big fight a little over five years ago about a pair of bills in Congress called SOPA and PIPA that proposed allowing for such an order being issued to third parties like search engines, ISPs, domain registrars and the like, demanding they block all access to certain websites. And, following quite a public outcry (which also explained why this approach would do serious harm to certain security standards and other technical aspects of how the internet works), Congress backed down and decided it did not want to enable courts to issue such orders.

So why the hell is Magistrate Judge John F. Anderson recommending such an order?

At the very least, it seems problematic. Even if you ignore the Sci-Hub part of the equation (since it ignored the lawsuit, a default judgment was basically inevitable), you should be concerned about this. Here's a court order binding a very large number of non-parties to the lawsuit to completely block access to a variety of websites, without any sort of due process. One hopes that ISPs, domain registrars and search engines will push back on such an overbroad order -- one that even Congress realized was a step too far and never authorized.

Filed Under: copyright, dns, injunctions, intermediary liability, john f. anderson, search engines, site blocking, sopa
Companies: acs, sci-hub

This Week In Techdirt History: The Slaying Of SOPA

from the a-big-week dept

Five Years Ago

It's time for one more focused retrospective on the events of this week in 2012: the week of the SOPA blackout and a huge victory for the internet. First, we dip briefly into the previous week, where we put out a special Saturday post to report the surprise news that the White House had come out against the approach in SOPA/PIPA. The MPAA responded to this with a bizarro-world statement interpreting it as a sign they could rush the bills through and Rupert Murdoch lashed out at the president on Twitter, while NBCUniversal's Rick Cotton was lying about the bill on MSNBC and Harry Reid was admitting concerns but insisting they must push forward. But the looming Wednesday blackout was gaining steam: Wikipedia officially announced its participation with a tweet from Jimmy Wales, then Google announced that it would join the fray, but not with a full blackout (later revealing a blacked-out logo that drew a lot of attention to its petition page). The Internet Archive (recently declared a rogue site by the entertainment industry) threw its hat into the ring as well, as did gaming site Rock Paper Shotgun and some artists like Peter Gabriel. Even Microsoft, while not joining the blackout, finally made it clear that it opposed the bills in their current form. For our part, we decided that blacking out to raise awareness wouldn't be so helpful on Techdirt where almost all of our readers were well aware of SOPA, and instead spent the day reporting on what was happening.

With all this going on, even before the protest there was talk of the bills being dead — but Lamar Smith quickly made it clear that wasn't the case. He and the MPAA both brushed off the planned blackout as a publicity stunt, and Smith put out a press release announcing the next phase of markup for the bills. On blackout day (Wednesday, January 18th) the denial continued, with the MPAA making the astonishing claim that no "big sites" had joined the protests (Wikipedia, Google and Reddit, anyone?) and Chris Dodd spouting sanctimonious bluster about tech companies turning users into their pawns. A whole bunch of creators signed a letter saying they don't want SOPA/PIPA passed in their names, and soon the blackout began to take effect...

The first one to go was Rep. Lee Terry, who removed his name as a co-sponsor. On the senate site, Marco Rubio followed suit. Then Senators Boozman, Hatch and Blunt and Rep. Quayle, with more and more joining them as the day progressed. The most entertaining response came from Rep. Bruce Braley of Iowa. At the end of the day, we noted that 8-million people had looked up their Representatives' information with Wikipedia's tool, and posted a gallery of all the blackout screens. Senator Ron Wyden, long-time opponent of the bills, thanked the internet but noted that the work was not yet done.

The reaction continued strong into the next day, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell calling for the bill to be dropped all four GOP candidates for the 2012 election said no to SOPA and PIPA. But the most telling responses came from the industries that pushed the bills to begin with: Hollywood studio execs expressed pretty blatant anger at the fact that the government wouldn't stay bought, and the MPAA straight-up threatened politicians who wouldn't stick to its agenda. The RIAA, meanwhile, just condescended to the internet.

On Friday, staunch supporter Marsha Blackburn conceded that it was time to scrap SOPA, and by the end of the day the internet had won: the bills were both listed as "delayed" and both Harry Reid and Lamar Smith announced that they would no longer move forward with them. We analyzed a long interview with Chris Dodd to explain why the industry's approach failed, and then began focusing on what comes next.

But there was no need to look far, because for all the significance of the victory, SOPA/PIPA were also a prime example of winning the battle not being the same as winning the war. Not only did the Supreme Court choose the blackout day to issue the Golan ruling that allowed works to be yanked back out of the public domain — on Thursday, in the midst of SOPA/PIPA chaos, the DOJ went ahead and unilaterally seized and shut down Megaupload and arrested many of the principles, including Kim Dotcom.

They didn't need SOPA to do it. They didn't need anything to do it. Much like the seizures of Dajaz1 and Rojadirecta, they didn't even appear to need especially solid legal footing: at least, they took a whole lot of questionable things as evidence of criminal activity. Some artists like Busta Rhymes spoke out in defence of the site (it being an extremely useful distribution tool) — and then Anonymous struck back with widespread DDoS attacks on entertainment industry websites, prompting some nonsensical free speech complaints from the MPAA and suspicions that the DoJ might have provoked Anonymous on purpose.

As we now know, the arrest of Kim Dotcom was just the beginning of another long fight about the overreach of the US government and the influence of the entertainment industry thereon — and we know that's not the only example of a continued war against the supporters of free culture and an open internet. The internet should still take time to remember and celebrate the defeat of SOPA though, if only because we're almost certainly going to have to do the same thing again, and again, and again...

Filed Under: history, look back, pipa, sopa

What the Five Year Anniversary of the SOPA/PIPA Blackout Can Teach Congress About Tech

from the sopa,-pipa,-spotify-and-privacy dept

Five years ago this week, Americans opened their internet browsers and saw darkness.

Google, Wikipedia, Reddit, the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) and other major websites had banded together and gone dark to make a then-obscure piece of legislation infamous. Wikipedia shut down completely for 24 hours and a black band masked the Google logo.

These internet giants and other online sites joined millions of Americans in protesting the 2012 Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) legislation in a historic grassroots movement. More than four million people signed Google's online petition linked to the blacked-out homepage. Eight million people looked up how to contact their representative when prompted to by Wikipedia. Tumblr alone produced 87,000 calls to representatives. The vast numbers led most congressional sponsors to rescind their support of the bill.

SOPA and PIPA were well intended but ill-advised attempts on the part of Congress to protect the American copyright industry. But the legislation was so broad that it had the potential to harm or eradicate entire websites or online services, instead of specifically targeting individuals who uploaded illegal content.

The New York Times called the SOPA/PIPA protests a "coming of age for the tech industry," and at CTA, we were proud to help lead this vital growth. It was a bipartisan and cross industry effort: venture capitalists and law professors, computer scientists and human rights advocates, progressives and tea partiers teamed together to fight the bills. Still, the bills progressed through Congress and appeared to have the momentum necessary to become law.

The 2012 CES proved to be one of the turning points. We invited two legislators — Republican Congressman Darrell Issa and Democratic Senator Ron Wyden — to Las Vegas to explain how the bill would jeopardize the freedom of the digital world. Both policymakers made strong, smart and passionate cases, and the press and attendees listened. Within days, the tide had reversed, and members of Congress ceased their support of the harmful bills. Weeks later, SOPA and PIPA were history.

We did this because we believe innovation, not an overbroad law, is the best way to grow the economy and fight piracy. History has proved us right. In five years since SOPA/PIPA failed, we've seen many instances of market disruptions and many more cases of technological innovation. Spotify, the now-ubiquitous Swedish streaming service, intentionally developed free streaming as a legal competitor to illegal piracy. It worked: piracy has dropped significantly. In 2013, less than 10 percent of daily web traffic in North America came from peer-to-peer file sharing compared to 31 percent in 2008.

Even more exciting, streaming services also led to significant revenue growth for the music industry. The Recording Industry Association of America, one of the major supporters of the SOPA/PIPA legislation, reported an 8.1 percent increase in overall revenues from the first half of 2015 to the first half of 2016. This was due in large part to paid subscriptions to streaming services.

Other content industries have experienced massive growth as well. Video streaming programs such as Netflix, Amazon and Hulu continue to thrive. U.S. consumers spent 22 percent more on subscription video streaming services in 2016 than in 2015.

The combination of audio and video streaming takes up a whopping 71 percent of evening home entertainment in North America, and this number should only grow in the coming years. Once at odds on the floor of Congress, the innovation of the tech industry and the creativity of the media industries now mutually support and sustain one another's growth.

New technologies will lead to the same market disruptions that the internet prompted for the media industry. Will Congress support new technologies or stifle them? And how will legacy industries evolve to thrive in this changing technological landscape?

This year at CES 2017 in Las Vegas, innovators from around the globe came to exhibit technology that will change our world as we know it. Augmented and virtual reality technology will profoundly affect the media landscape, creating a more immersive and personalized experience. Drones have already changed the face of the retail industry, with Amazon making its first drone delivery in time for the holiday season. Self-driving cars will revolutionize the auto industry, decrease traffic deaths and bring increased mobility to the elderly and those with disabilities. In dealing with the challenges that will inevitably arise, will Congress choose to preserve old models and technologies, or will it embrace the new and allow American ingenuity to lead?

Five years ago, members of Congress sided with progress over fear. The resulting explosion of innovation proved them right. As other new disruptive technologies emerge, we urge policymakers to heed the lessons of SOPA and PIPA and allow new innovations to prosper, thrive and move our society forward.

Gary Shapiro is president and CEO of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), the U.S. trade association representing more than 2,200 consumer technology companies, and author of the New York Times best-selling books, Ninja Innovation: The Ten Killer Strategies of the World's Most Successful Businesses and The Comeback: How Innovation Will Restore the American Dream. His views are his own. Connect with him on Twitter: @GaryShapiro

Filed Under: anniversary, congress, copyright, gary shapiro, innovation, pipa, sopa, technology
Companies: cta

Dear Lawmakers: Five Years Ago The Internet Rose Up In Protest & We're Still Watching

from the we're-still-here dept

As you may have heard, today is the five-year anniversary of the massive internet blackout that tons of internet users and sites participated in to protest a pair of awful copyright laws, SOPA & PIPA, which would have undermined some of the most basic principles of a free and open internet. In case you've somehow forgotten, go and take a look at the Archive Team's world tour of sites that either went down completely or put up some sort of detailed splash page speaking out against the bills and in favor of internet rights and freedoms. Contrary to what some have tried to claim in rewriting history, that event was a true example of a grassroots uprising against legacy industries and government bureaucracies that wanted to shackle the internet and make it less open, less free and less powerful.

Since that day, there have been multiple other fights around internet freedom, having to do with mass surveillance, encryption, privacy, net neutrality and more. And there will continue to be more fights -- some of them repeats of fights we've already had, and some brand new ones. In particular, we see that Congress is already dipping its toes in the water about copyright reform, five years after SOPA. For years, we heard that, after SOPA, no one in Congress wanted to touch copyright law for fear of "being SOPA'd." However, with some of the new plans coming out for copyright reform, it appears that some in Congress are hoping that the internet has forgotten or moved on.

The internet has not forgotten. The internet is watching closely.

This applies not just to copyright reform, but the latest plans to do away with net neutrality. As outgoing FCC boss Tom Wheeler has warned, the new FCC undermines net neutrality at its own peril. The public overwhelmingly supports net neutrality, and attempts to undermine it will lead the internet to speak up again. Of course, if those in power have their way, part of the undermining of an open internet will be to make it even harder for the public to speak out -- which is why we need to do so loudly while we can.

There are, of course, also ongoing fights about backdooring encryption and mass surveillance on the internet. We still need to reform ECPA and other outdated surveillance laws. Executive Order 12333 is still a massive blackhole of surveillance powers. Later this year, Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act is going to sunset and there will be a fight over its renewal.

We can't -- and won't -- create a massive "internet blackout" for every single threat to internet freedom. Unfortunately, if we were doing that, it would happen far too often. But policymakers are being naive if they think that they can effectively DDoS the internet policy space by promoting so many bad policies at once that the internet won't notice. We may not win every battle, but the internet is watching carefully what policy makers do around making sure the internet remains open and free -- and is ready to speak out when those core principles are attacked by legacy industries unwilling to innovate or by policymakers too captured by industries who seek to block innovation.

The internet is watching. The internet has not forgotten. And policymakers that seek to undermine an open internet may discover just how quickly and loudly the open internet responds to such threats.

Filed Under: advocacy, congress, copyright, encryption, internet freedom, net neutrality, open internet, pipa, politics, protests, sopa

This Week In Techdirt History: SOPA, China, Dajaz1 & The Hypocrisy Of Copyright

from the a-closer-look dept

Five Years Ago

Today we're dedicating this post to another focused look at the events of this week in 2011, in the midst of the SOPA fight and some other important developments on the copyright and internet freedom fronts that highlighted the government's and the industry's hypocrisy on the issue.

Firstly, the backlash against SOPA/PIPA continued to grow. Anti-virus firm Kaspersky dumped its association with the BSA over the organization's support for SOPA, while the American Bar Association was having an internal fight over how to react to the bills; human rights groups and people with disabilities spoke up to point out how much SOPA could hurt them, constitutional scholars explained why it doesn't pass First Amendment scrutiny, a former White House technology advisor explained the disastrous effect it could have on privacy, and Paul Vixie declared that he would stand against the bills even though they'd probably help his business.

With all this backlash, how was SOPA still standing? For one thing, big media firms were donating plenty of money to the bill's sponsors, and spending plenty more buying astroturf support since the public overwhelmingly opposed them. And surprise, surprise: two congressional staffers who helped write SOPA got comfy industry lobbyist jobs. Plus, there were still plenty of nonsensical and/or hilarious arguments for the bill, and bizarre claims about being able to ignore its worst provisions. When Chinese internet users laughed at the US for considering its own Great Firewall, the MPAA boss shockingly upped the ante by holding China's successful censorship up as a shining example.

And that's where we begin to see the amazing hypocrisy inherent in SOPA, for that very same week Hillary Clinton was speaking out against internet censorship — something the State Dept. has always done alongside the government's ongoing attempts to regulate the internet domestically. And this was also the week that the details of the embarrassingly terrible Dajaz1 domain seizure came out, revealing that the government censored a blog for over a year for no good reason. The site deserved a huge apology, but ICE avoided admitting anything while the RIAA outright refused to apologize and stood by the seizure. Meanwhile, yet another website was in similar limbo: the court dismissed the case against Puerto 80 and Rojadirecta but refused to give back the domain, leaving the company to try to explain to everyone why the seizure was unconstitutional.

Oh and speaking of the RIAA? They were also nosing their way into the Righthaven fight, because I guess their reputation wasn't tarnished enough. And amidst that, just for fun, they also had the gall to claim they already solved the piracy problem years ago.

Give them an inch and they'll take a mile, then publish a press release demanding 10 and fund a "grassroots" organization that calls it half a million inches. Little has changed in five years, and as we approach yet another copyright reform fight, it's good to look back on SOPA and remember how stalwart we're going to have to be.

Filed Under: history, look back, sopa

This Week In Techdirt History: A SOPA Retrospective

from the memba? dept

Over the past couple of weeks in our look at 2011, SOPA began to rear its head. This week things really hit full steam, and so for this history post we're going to focus just on what went down in the SOPA fight five years ago.

All eyes were on the upcoming House Judiciary Committee hearings, which were stacked 5 to 1 in favor of censoring the internet. Leading up to them, we pointed out how attempts at censorship in the UK demonstrated how SOPA would fail, that Silicon Valley hadn't realized it was in DC's crosshairs, and why all filmmakers should speak out against the bill. Soon, the chorus of voices opposed to SOPA (and its partner PROTECT-IP) began to grow at an astounding pace: Facebook, Twitter, eBay and other big internet companies spoke up, and were joined by over 100 lawyers and law professors and then hackers, the ACLU, consumer rights groups, and human rights groups; venture capitalists explained how it would break the internet, a study showed how it would chill innovation and investment, and the EFF warned about its regulation of VPNs, proxies and other privacy tools; Ron Paul joined the ranks of congressional opposition while SOPA supporter Joe Biden accidentally explained why the bills were un-American; a study showed that the majority of Americans opposed SOPA, and even Canadians were speaking up, fearing collateral damage. And we featured voices ranging from filmmakers and technologists to health care activists explaining the damage SOPA would do.

How did the other side respond? First Amendment expert Floyd Abrams twisted himself in verbal knots explaining how SOPA would censor protected speech but somehow not violate the First Amendment; the House Judiciary Committee denied that its hearings were stacked in any way; Viacom made the absurd and hilarious threat that failing to pass SOPA might mean Spongebob Squarepants dies; and the bill's congressional sponsors weakly tried to say it was going to protect the troops. Then the hearings got underway and were largely a SOPA love-fest, though a lot of Representatives expressed serious concerns.

Meanwhile, we still had more questions: how would we even guage SOPA's success? Do you really want to give China and other oppressive regimes a blueprint for internet censorship? Following the hearings, even more people spoke up: the EU Parliament warned the US against censorship efforts, Nancy Pelosi called for a better solution, multiple Senators came out against PROTECT-IP, security experts warned against DNS filtering, and the Washington Post's Dominic Basulto wrote an incredulous column about the message SOPA sends to the world. It even started to become a congressional election issue, with challengers calling out the SOPA support of incumbent representatives.

And amazingly, as we all now know, the protests had not yet even come close to their peak.

Filed Under: history, look back, sopa

Can Someone Explain To The RIAA That SOPA Didn't Actually Pass?

from the let's-try-this-again dept

Earlier this week, basically all of the major record labels filed a lawsuit against YouTube-mp3.org, which as you may have guessed from the URL, helps people get audio downloads from YouTube videos. There have been a number of similar sites over the years, and they tend to disappear relatively quickly. Apparently this one lasted long enough that the major labels decided to sue.

There are many, many, many problems with the lawsuit which we'll be discussing, but let's start with the big one. The RIAA and the labels seem to believe that SOPA became law back in 2012, rather than being soundly rejected. That's because, as the EFF notes in a blog post, the real target of the lawsuit does not appear to be Youtube-mp3.org, but a bunch of third party service providers. Specifically, the lawsuit asks for two highly questionable remedies targeting non-parties to the lawsuit:

enjoining Defendants and all third parties with notice of the Order, including any Web hosts, domain-name registrars, domain name registries, and proxy or reverse proxy services, and their administrators, from facilitating access to any or all domain names, URLs and websites (including, without limitation, www.youtube-mp3.org) through which Defendants infringe Plaintiffs’ copyrights;

and

enjoining all third parties with notice of the Order from maintaining, operating, or providing advertising, financial, technical, or other support to YTMP3 and any other domain names, URLs, or websites through which Defendants infringe Plaintiffs’ copyrights, including without limitation www.youtubemp3.org; and enjoining all third-party distributors of applications, toolbars or similar software with notice of the Order from distributing any applications, toolbars, or similar software applications that interoperate with any domain names, URLs, or websites through which Defendants infringe Plaintiffs’ copyrights, including without limitation www.youtube-mp3.org.

Again, this was the kind of remedy SOPA was designed to enable. But SOPA did not become law. As the EFF points out:

As we’ve explained before in other cases, this request is a gross overreach. Federal court rules have a narrow provision that lets successful plaintiffs request a court order against a defendant and people in “active concert and participation” with them, meaning a close associate or co-conspirator. That provision doesn’t allow for orders that bind every vendor providing services to a defendant, especially those with no direct business relationship. So the litany of intermediaries listed in the labels’ complaint are not within the court’s power to bind.

What the complaint asks for is also far broader than the law allows. By asking all of those intermediaries to block all “websites through which Defendants infringe Plaintiffs’ copyrights,” without specifying the URLs, the labels are seeking to conscript all of these companies as investigators who must chase down the defendants and block every website they use, under any name. Neither copyright nor trademark law allows courts to put this burden on Internet intermediaries, and for good reason: it’s prohibitively expensive for many, it inevitably leads to blocking of lawful speech, and it gives a big advantage to established players.

Finally, and perhaps worst of all, the record labels want to ban “any applications” that might “interoperate” with with youtube-mp3.org and any other websites owned by the defendants. That would seem to require every Web browser, mobile app, and Internet-connected device to block an ever-changing list of websites. Left unchecked, these kinds of orders could become a mechanism whereby the content industry gets veto power over online innovation.

Also, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in California, the site is owned by a guy in Germany, Philip Matesanz. An RIAA press release notes that the IFPI has also indicated it's going to file a similar case in the UK. Considering that there's a decently high chance that the guy in Germany won't bother responding to a lawsuit halfway around the world, the RIAA and its labels may simply be hoping for a default judgment, which they can then use to force all those third parties into blocking a website, despite a lack of a full trial over the issues with the case.

And, oh boy, does this lawsuit have serious issues. On a conceptual level, how is what this site is doing really all that different from a VCR in recording a TV show? In this case, it's just recording an audio file from a video file. And such recordings for personal time shifting uses are considered fair use and not infringing. It's also quite a useful tool for other fair use activities too — we've used a similar site to grab audio quotes from videos for discussion in our podcast. The "stream ripping" site is just a tool for making such fair use recordings, meaning it has substantial non-infringing uses. So why do the RIAA and these labels insist that it's infringing?

The lawsuit notes that this service likely violates YouTube's terms of service, but YouTube/Google are not the plaintiff. They're not the ones arguing over the terms of service being violated (in fact, you could argue that Google is a target of the lawsuit via the third party injunction attempts discussed above).

Part of the lawsuit alleges that YTMP3 violates the DMCA by "circumventing" YouTube's "technological measures" designed to block access to the actual video file, but it's not clear how this kind of thing is really a technological protection measure under the DMCA. All it does is obscure the full URL, but still make it accessible. Is it really circumvention to figure out how to get to a publicly accessible URL? That seems like a big leap by the RIAA:

Plaintiffs are informed and believe, and on that basis allege as follows: YouTube has adopted and implemented technological measures to control access to content maintained on its site and to prevent or inhibit downloading, copying, or illicit distribution of that content. YouTube maintains two separate URLs for any given video file: one URL, which is visible to the user, is for the webpage where the video playback occurs, and one URL, which is not visible to the user, is for the video file itself. The second URL is generated using a complex (and periodically changing) algorithm – known as a “rolling cipher” – that is intended to inhibit direct access to the underlying YouTube video files, thereby preventing or inhibiting the downloading, copying, or distribution of the video files.

That second URL is not "protected" in any real way. It's a publicly accessible URL -- it's just that YouTube doesn't make it easy to find. So does that really count as circumvention? That seems like a big question here as well.

Either way, as noted above, these important questions may not get answered if YTMP3 simply decides to ignore the lawsuit -- and the RIAA may very well be counting on that. It really does seem like the labels deliberately picked a site that is likely not interested in defending this lawsuit, no matter how questionable, allowing it to really go after a ton of 3rd party sites and services, as if SOPA were the law.

Filed Under: anti-circumvention, copyright, dmca, sopa, stream ripping, third party injunctions