$4 Million In Fines For Linking To Infringing Files

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The MPAA won judgments totaling $4M against two sites which merely link to infringing content. They're not arguing that it's an infringement of their distribution right, like the RIAA has with their 'making available' argument. Instead, they got the sites for 'contributory copyright infringement', just like RIAA v. LimeWire. To translate all that legalese into English, search engines which primarily index copyright-infringing material and the people who run them may not be safe in the US. That applies even if the sites in question do not host any infringing materials, participate in, or encourage the infringement done by their users. And, even honoring DMCA notices in order to take advantage of the DMCA Safe Harbor provisions hasn't prevented the **AA from suing."

Comments

Copywrong.

[Odder]

So now any service can be DoS'd by the RIAA and MPAA. You know they will stuff any independent index with their crappy content and so destroy all alternative distribution channels.

Re:Copywrong.

[palegray.net]

This is actually something I hadn't considered before. Say some industry thugs go out and find some techno-thugs who just happen to operate in a jurisdiction outside the reach of U.S. law and monitoring. Said techno-thugs inherit big bags of money for all the infringing content they can get placed on competing independent distribution systems alongside "legitimate" tracks.

Unfortunately for them, said independent distribution guys just happen to be inside U.S. jurisdiction. Bad day...

Re:Copywrong.

[Kjella]

Index stuffing doesn't quite do it, as far as I can tell from TFA.

both were found guilty of contributory copyright infringement, according to the judges' opinions, because they searched for, identified, collected, and indexed links to illegal copies of movies and TV shows. That goes quite a bit beyond mere running a forum, that's actively seeking out illegal content and indexing it up for others to download (probably with some ad revenue for your trouble). I don't know what kind of site they was, but it's far between the "there's a bunch of torrent links" and "here's a sorted index by TV show with verified links without fakes or dupes that we compiled". The former is one of "meh, we can't control everything our users do" while the latter is "here's a service we offer specificly to help you all find pirated stuff", and clearly the latter is exactly what contributory copyright infringement is supposed to cover.

I mean, apart from these sites do you know any other site that so blatantly and directly markets themselves to people breaking the law? It'd be on the level of a water pipe store with a posted map to nearby pot salesmen. Aside from my feelings on copyright, if something first is illegal I think there should be limits to how far you can go assisting them, marketing to them, turning a blind eye to them and so on. Whether you call that "aiding and abetting", "conspiracy" or "contributory infringement" is more of a legal issue, but clearly some of these sites overstep what I'd consider natural. It's like seeing a gun marketed as "Cop killer*" and in 2pt font "*only applicable when said cop is on drugs, shooting wildly around him and shooting him would be in self-defense". Some of the piracy sites are equally blatant, like "Get the latest TV shows here*" and in 2pt font "*no responsibility for 3rd party content."

Re:Copywrong.

[Odder]

Anyone can be shut down with this, not just "thugs". Google's YouTube service has been in the crosshairs for a while now. All the legacy copyright owners have to do is stuff the channel to shut it down. Copyright must be changed to prevent that kind of denial of service. One of PJ's first entries was about P2P and industry's fear of a richer world.

Google is likely to sued real soon as well as many

[Joe The Dragon]

Google is likely to sued real soon as well as many other web sites.

Re:Google is likely to sued real soon as well as m

[UnxMully]

I see this as a very bad thing all around. Surely the point of search engines is that they provide access to all corners of teh interweb and can only do this by hitting every site and indexing it. If they become responsible for the content on those sites, or rather not providing links to "illegal" content, how do they continue to provide that access when they may potentially have to vet every link they index?

OK, so they can filter but surely that's as much of a minefield as indexing everything? Imagine the law suits when their filtering algorithms start excluding one company and include their opposition.

Not sure I like the sound of this.

Re:Google is likely to sued real soon as well as m

[reebmmm]

Well, no. These sites' purpose and content consisted substantially of indexing and enabling the search for unlawful copies of copyrighted works. While Google certainly has some capability to do this as well, I don't think most people would see that as a substantial portion of their content or their purpose.

This case really isn't that surprising.

If I am reading this correctly

[doomedpr0digy]

This will break the internet.

Re:Google is likely to sued real soon as well as m

[palegray.net]

OK, so they can filter but surely that's as much of a minefield as indexing everything? Imagine the law suits when their filtering algorithms start excluding one company and include their opposition. No, they can't filter without running a much higher risk of being held responsible for the content. Google's "SafeSearch" feature sort of skirts the fine edge of this reasoning, but hasn't been challenged yet (i.e. Google getting sued because someone found kiddie porn being "make available" via their search engine). Their broad filtering of search results in some non-U.S. markets might be "iffy" as well.

Although not meeting the strict legal definition as such, search engine providers like Google could conceivably angle for the protections afforded common carriers.