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Harlan Ellison vs. AOL Judgment Reversed
Robotech_Master writes "An appeals court has issued a decision reversing the summary judgment of a lower court that AOL qualified as a "safe harbor" under the DMCA. At issue is the fact that Ellison sent his notification of copyright violation to an email address at AOL, which AOL never received because the abuse submission address had been changed." The complete decision is available here as a PDF file; read below for an excerpt.
"AOL changed its contact e-mail address from "copyright@aol.com" to "aolcopyright@aol.com" in the fall of 1999, but waited until April 2000 to register the change with the U.S. Copyright Office. Moreover, AOL failed to configure the old e-mail address so that it would either forward messages to the new address or return new messages to their senders. In the meantime, complaints such as Ellison's went unheeded, and complainants were not notified that their messages had not been delivered. Furthermore, there is evidence in the record suggesting that a phone call from AOL subscriber John J. Miller to AOL should have put AOL on notice of the infringing activity on the particular USENET group at issue in this case, "alt.binaries.e-book." Miller contacted AOL to report the existence of unauthorized copies of works by various authors. Because there is evidence indicating that AOL changed its e-mail address in an unreasonable manner and that AOL should have been on notice of infringing activity we conclude that a reasonable trier of fact could find that AOL had reason to know of potentially infringing activity occurring within its USENET network."
They failed to change copyright to forward to aolcopyright? That does sound a bit odd. But AOL is known for doing stupid things.
Looks like actual notice to me.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
If you find someone copying your stuff on the internet, don't send a notice to the ISP's email address, CALL THEM!
Shorter summary:
If it needs to be done, email ain't the mode of communication you want.
In order to get protection from being liable for the actions of users under the DMCA, any ISP must register contact information, and then inform their user that they either have to pull the allegedly offending content or the ISP will pull it for them.
Basically, the accusation is that AOL stopped checking the address they had on file at the copyright office, and therefore has lost its protections in any case that was submitted to that address during the unchecked timeframe.
Why doesn't AOL just settle with Ellison, maybe offer him like 5,000 free hours instead of the normal 2,500?
* Hours must be used within the 45 day trial period.
(Hint: how many hours in 45 days?)
The DMCA usually protects the mega-ISP from being responsible for the copyright violations of its users when it posts user-submitted content without screening it.
However, in order to qualify for that protection, the ISP has to register a contact point with the Copyright Office for all complaints to be sent, and must respond to all properly formatted requests sent to that contact point. It turns out this request to kill a Usenet posting from AOL's servers got lost because the copyright owner sent it to the registered address, but it turns out nobody was reading it since they had established a new address and didn't change their registration.
Therefore, the plantiff followed the law correctly, and AOL missed their chance to escape punishment by letting the time run out. Therefore, the safe harbor clause of the DMCA doesn't apply here, and AOL's going to be open to liablity here.
Well, nothing's set in stone yet. The higher court just said that the lower court didn't cover all it's bases correctly, and needs to try again.
That said, you are liable if you distribute copyrighted works (that aren't yours and you don't have rights to distribute) and do not fall under the safe harbor clauses. This decision just says that AOL may have not completed all the paperwork correctly to fall under the safe harbor clause.
Moral: Do your paperwork correctly.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Neither of which should have any relevance to the case, of course. Nut case or not, good writer or not, he should have the same rights - no more, no less - as anyone else. Likewise, AOL should have the same rights as any other ISP.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Yea, all of a sudden anything having to do with "illegal" content is immediately labeled "peer to peer."
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Well since AOL apparently bothced their get-out-of-jail feee card I wonder if they are going to spend some of that cash pile of theirs to put a big dent in the DMCA to get of the hook.
Or if the AOL part will just bend over and take it so that the Time Warner part can keep their beloved DMCA intact.
/greger
And networks like it.
Harlan thinks of some turkey posts his book on USENET, he should then be able to attack all the zillions of people running a USENET server.
In his first round, he didn't do well, but he did have this one technicality -- AOL didn't handle their complaint address properly. And AOL getting dinged for this is fine. What we need to worry about is what the precedent means.
I mean, we've all had email go astray before, had servers go down, had mail drop on the floor. (Happens daily in the world of overactive spam filters.)
This might mean that some sites will decide there is too much legal risk in hosting content or usenet servers.
This part of the DMCA (little relation to the circumvention parts) was meant to make it easier to be an ISP, though at the cost of making them obey every takedown without requiring proof in some cases.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
I've never heard nor seen USENET refered to as a "peer to peer" file sharing network.
Given a reasonably broad definition of "peer to peer", I'd say it's a reasonable description (if a politically loaded one at the moment) of how Usenet servers treat each other. It's a little more complicated, because each peer then serves many actual clients, and typically every server has a full copy of the content in question (i.e. it's not "on demand" as are most peer to peer systems seem to be). Still, the end result is something that's a lot closer to peer-to-peer than client-server.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
In any large (even medium) organisation, there is no guarantee that your complaint has been heard *by the right person*. That's like serving verbal notice on McDonalds by talking to the guy who gives you your fries.
Email leaves a permanent record. It's a much better medium than the phone for this sort of thing, and AOL are meant to be an internet company. Normally, I would say registered mail - but in this case, it appears that AOL registered this email specifically, in accordance with the law, and then changed it/neglected to check the old one.
It's either that or "terrorist". Take your pick :-)
What?
THEIR WORK HAS BEEN THROWN ONTO THE WEB BY THESE SMARTASS VANDALS WHO FIND IT AN IMPOSITION TO HAVE TO PAY FOR THE GOODS
You know what? I was a teenager from a poor family. No father and an overworked mother going to school and holding down a full-time job at the same time bringing in barely minimum wage. No child-support. Living with her parents (our grandparents).
My main exposure to good books was online, through Project Gutenberg and various shared copies of e-books (fair use?). I had never even HEARD of Ellison until I read a copy of one of his books online.
I find spending $20 on a CD to be ludicrous and criminal. But you know what else I find criminal? Spending $20, $30, $40 or even $50 for a book of fiction. Christ, it's a couple hundred half-sheets of paper glued and bound into a set of thick cardboard covers for fucks's sake.
It's cheaper to get full platinum digital cable with every movie channel and HBO and all the channels your cable provider offers each month than to afford a book per week reading habit. Books are fucking criminally expensive and I can't blame people for sharing them.
People like Harlan not only want people to not share ebooks, but he doesn't want them to share real physical books either. They don't like libraries, they don't like used book stores. They don't like auctions for used books. They don't even want you to give a copy of a book to a friend when you're done reading it. They want every person who ever reads their work to have to pay for it all over again.
So excuse me if I don't cry you a fucking river, you pompous prick. And excuse the fuck out of me if I don't send you a check for your stupid "kick internet piracy" bullshit.
If computer geeks always have to add IANAL disclaimers when talking about the law, can we get lawyers to use I Know Jack About Computers disclaimers?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
At the risk of being modded a troll, let me say that, if you can't afford the man's books, buy or do something else. Get outside and exercise, for crying out loud.
Stealing is wrong, OK? Always. It's not right when you find it convenient. It's not right when you think someone's charging too much. If you don't like it, that's just too bad, Chuckles. How would you like it if Harlan broke into your house in the middle of the night and took your computer?
I have news for all the 13-year-old buttheads out there: the world does not revolve around you, You can't get everything you want, and life,as they say, is a b**ch. Get over it.
Harlan, good luck to you.
Library books are already paid for, and have "Analog Rights Management" (if you're excuse the expression) attached to them: you have to give the book back when you're done, and it's a pain in the neck for casual copying.
So, you're right. Just go to the Library. Great suggestion, one I didn't think of
I'm with you. This "life + 70" shit is often justified as a way to "bequeath the business to one's family", but that's a load of crap. If a man is a carpenter and wants to leave his carpentry business to his son, he better teach the kid carpentry. The business of an author is writing, so it satnds to reason that the only way to pass on such a business is to teach your kids to write, no? The carpenters kid can't go around to houses his dad built and demand payment for his dad's work. Author's descendents shouldn't get to either. My favorite line from crackpot Ellison's ALL CAPS LETTER is the one where he claims "A WRITER'S WORK IS NOT INFORMATION: IT IS OUR CREATIVE PROPERTY, OUR LIVELIHOOD AND OUR FAMILIES' ANNUITY." Bullshit. If a writer wants to leave his family an annuity, he should have to set up a trust fund with money like the rest of us slobs.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.