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Court Slams Record Companies in New Vimeo/DMCA Ruling (arstechnica.com)
Remember when Capitol Records sued Vimeo over copyright-violating videos? They just lost in court again, when an Appeals court overruled three lower court decisions. Slashdot reader NewYorkCountryLawyer shares the specifics of the Appeals court's findings:
[T]he Copyright Office was dead wrong in concluding that pre-1972 sound recordings aren't covered by the DMCA... the judge was wrong to think that Vimeo employees' merely viewing infringing videos was sufficient evidence of "red flag knowledge"... a few sporadic instances of employees being cavalier about copyright law did not amount to a "policy of willful blindness" on the part of the company.
"The decision once again affirms that the DMCA extends immunity to a service provider for the infringement of their customers if the service provider removes material at the request of the right holder," writes Ars Technica.
The story as published implies that the ruling overruled the lower court on the 3 issues. In fact, it was agreeing with the trial court on the third issue -- that the sporadic instances of Vimeo employees making light of copyright law did not amount to adopting a "policy of willful blindness".
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
The record companies are always trying to make it someone else's responsibility to police their own property, but this is ridiculous because no one else *can* properly monitor for infringement.
This is because copyright infringement relies on a lack of permission. If someone has permission from the copyright holder to upload something, it's not infringement! As we learned in the Viacom v. YouTube case, they might in fact upload "leaked' material as a part of their marketing, which would appear to anyone but the copyright holder as obvious infringement. Thus, I question whether infringement can every be truly "obvious." Sure, I have a pretty good idea that the Photoshop on some warez site probably isn't legit, but I don't actually know who Adobe has and has not given permission to. I have no way to reach inside their head and get a list of everyone they've ever authorized. Heck, Viacom proved that even they can't always keep track of it: even after high-dollar lawyers spent hours reviewing material, they had to drop videos from the case because Viacom itself had authorized the videos! And they didn't survive just one round of legal review, but two. That's right, TWICE they had to correct themselves.
So what chance does some site owner have of guessing who they have and have not given permission to? How can a 3rd party be expected to keep accurate track of everyone that every one of the billions of copyright holders in the world (yes billions--copyright is automatic and we hold copyright on every trivial thing we make or write) has put out?
Obviously, it's an untenable burden for anyone, but the copyright holder is simply the only party with the information to do this and it's their property to begin with. So in no way and at no time will it or can it ever be appropriate to shift this burden onto some third party and every attempt to shift this burden onto someone else should be ridiculed for its thoughtlessness.
So when will Cloudflare, who refuses to remove or block any content when a DMCA is sent to them? Just more "we're just a proxy, we'll pass your DMCA to the actual host, but do nothing to stop the infringing site at all"
Exactly! I almost had a "wtf" moment, which forced me to read the rest of the summary!
I was afraid you'd abandoned us, NYCL! Have you been keeping up to date on the new guy's attempts to improve things around here?
But what do I know?
As to my absence I've been a bit overwhelmed by work stuff, sorry about that, it's no excuse :)
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful