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Harlan Ellison Can Sue AOL Under DMCA

Posted by timothy on from the one-man-not-to-have-against-you dept.

mbstone writes "The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that sci-fi author Harlan Ellison can go ahead with his DMCA lawsuit against AOL. Seems somebody posted some Ellison stories to Usenet, AOL made 'em available, Ellison complained, and AOL blew him off."

8 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. Compliments to whoever wrote the document! by Sklivvz · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is ridiculous, the document reads "Stephen Robertson posted copies of some of Ellison's copyrighted short stories on a peer-to-peer file sharing network, the USENET.

    Since when is USENET a P2P Filesharing network? Ok, you can find a lot of stuff in it, but it's NOt peer2peer and file-sharing , it's client/server and message-posting! It's a totally different thing.

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    My Stack Overflow user
    1. Re:Compliments to whoever wrote the document! by lambent · · Score: 5, Informative

      Ah, my friend, you forget the fact that USENET is indeed made up up many different distributed peers.

      From the servers' points of view, it is P2P. That's why your experience on any one server my be drastically different than another.

      As for file sharing .... go check out the alt.* hierarchy.

    2. Re:Compliments to whoever wrote the document! by clonebarkins · · Score: 5, Informative
      From the servers' points of view, it is P2P.

      While it is undoubtedly P2P...

      As for file sharing .... go check out the alt.* hierarchy.

      ...just because people can share files on it, it's not a "filesharing system". People can share files via the World Wide Web, but it's not considered a "filesharing system". Calling USENET a "P2P filesharing system" is limiting at best and gives a potentially pejorative connotation.

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      "The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it." -- Ayn Rand

  2. Re:Vonnegut ! by JCMay · · Score: 3, Informative

    Are you sure about that?

  3. RTFA by JetScootr · · Score: 4, Informative

    In accordance with the DMCA, Ellison's lawyer sent AOL an email with notification of infringement. AOL ignored the email.
    Actually, Ellison was kinder to AOL than the RIAA has been to file sharers. This is the same thing, only it wasn't music, it was literature.
    The judge ruled that the lower court was wrong to issue summary judgement that infringement did not occur, even though the facts were accepted by both parties that the copyrighted material was posted.

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  4. Re:All Usenet would be vulnerable... by clonebarkins · · Score: 3, Informative
    He may have sent to the wrong e-mail, or it got lost among the spam.

    According to the decision, he sent it to the right email address, but AOL changed their copyright infringement notification email address from "copyright@aol.com" to "aolcopyright@aol.com" and didn't register their changes with the Copyright Office for 6 months or more. It was during this time period that Ellison sent the email. At best, this is negligence on AOL's part.

    Having said that, I doubt AOL will be found vicariously liable. Remember, this decision only says that Ellison is allowed to take AOL to trial. It indicates that the lower court was wrong to summarily decide the case, and it outlines what Ellison will need to prove in order to win (and vice versa for AOL).

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    "The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it." -- Ayn Rand

  5. Re:Vonnegut ! by shrubya · · Score: 3, Informative
    speech was _given_ by Kurt Vonnegut

    No, Vonnegut had absolutely positively nothing to do with the Sunscreen essay. Look it up for yourself.

  6. Ellison's comments by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Informative
    Here's what Harlan Ellison has to say about the appeal.

    Looking at it, it does look like he still has to clear several hurdles. So this isn't a sure thing. You can read about Harlan Ellison's general efforts to deal with protecting author's copyrights here.

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