Category: Copyright

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Copyright Patent Law Trade Secrets Trademarks Uncategorized

Scalia Law Alums Help Arts & Entertainment Advocacy Clinic Draft Influential Amicus Brief

jennifer-atkins
Jennifer Atkins of Cloudigy Law

Last spring, the Arts & Entertainment Advocacy Clinic at Scalia Law School filed an amicus brief on behalf of intellectual property law scholars in the Fox News v. TVEyes copyright infringement case. Assisting the students on the project was practicing IP attorney and Scalia Law alum Jennifer Atkins, who volunteered her time—and the time of her firm, Cloudigy Law—to work closely with the Clinic to craft a professional and influential brief.

Cloudigy Law is a boutique intellectual property law firm located in Tysons Corner, Virginia, that was founded by Antigone Peyton, another Scalia Law alum. Expanding the firm’s reach into all areas of IP law, Antigone recruited other Scalia Law alums including Clyde Findley and Jennifer Atkins to build a “cloud-based” intellectual property and technology firm that stresses client communication and offers an innovative service model that big law firms can’t match. Cloudigy’s attorneys stay on top of current developments in IP law through their Decoding IP blog, which includes podcast discussions of the issues important to their clients.

As a result of its unique approach and dedication to the client, Cloudigy has grown to eleven attorneys and technologists who offer high quality strategic advice to help identify and protect IP and realize its value. The firm uses sophisticated enterprise collaboration technology to effectively share knowledge and deadlines within its litigation team and with its clients. Cloudigy values the relationships it has built with smaller clients, and it has adapted and responded to changes in the legal services market to suit their needs.

Jennifer got involved with the Arts & Entertainment Advocacy Clinic through her Scalia Law alumni connections, partnering with Clinic Director and CPIP Senior Scholar Sandra Aistars and meeting with students to discuss project strategy. Because of her background as an appellate clerk for the Honorable E. Grady Jolly at the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and her extensive appellate practice experience as a partner with Kirkland & Ellis, Jennifer was a perfect match for the Clinic—according to Professor Aistars, Jennifer was an “ideal and impressive partner.”

Emphasizing the role of an amicus brief in litigation, Jennifer encouraged the students to assume perspectives different than those of the parties and to utilize effective writing techniques to produce an outstanding brief that would be useful to the court. As the students worked through drafts, Jennifer made valuable suggestions that helped them get at the underlying policy issues and flesh out a persuasive argument. Working alongside a seasoned professional through the amicus brief process was a truly invaluable experience for the Clinic students and something that they’ll draw on as they begin their legal careers. Jennifer also expressed her appreciation for the opportunity to guide the students through the process, saying it was a “great way for us to give back to our law school.”

As the Arts & Entertainment Advocacy Clinic begins another semester of work, connections with Scalia Law alums and IP professionals* will continue to provide the students with unique opportunities and to foster the mutually beneficial relationships that represent Scalia Law’s esteemed IP law program.

*Lawyers and IP professionals who would like the Clinic to weigh in on a pro-artist copyright case or who would like to explore other volunteer opportunities with the Arts & Entertainment Advocacy Clinic may contact Sandra Aistars at saistars@gmu.edu.

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Copyright Copyright Licensing Copyright Theory Infringement Intellectual Property Theory Internet Reasonable Royalty Uncategorized

Despite What You Hear, Notice and Takedown is Failing Creators and Copyright Owners

cameraIn a recent op-ed in the LA Times, Professors Chris Sprigman and Mark Lemley praise the notice and takedown provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as “a bit of copyright law worth saving.” They argue that Section 512 of the DMCA continues to serve its purpose of balancing the rights of copyright owners and creators with those of Internet service providers (ISPs), while leaving both sides only “slightly disappointed.” Satisfying these two groups is indeed a difficult charge, but it’s simply disingenuous to suggest that creators and copyright owners are satisfied with a system so clearly in need of an overhaul.

As the Copyright Office embarks on its review of the DMCA, supporters and critics of the nearly twenty-year-old doctrine are weighing in on its effectiveness in addressing online infringement. Sprigman and Lemley claim that the “process has worked well for years,” and that the result of shifting more enforcement burden to ISPs “could be a broken Internet.” But for those creators and copyright owners who have their works resurface online just minutes after they are taken down, the Internet is already “broken.” The fact that piracy continues to intensify, despite incredible efforts to have infringing content taken down, shows that notice and takedown is largely ineffective.

As CPIP Senior Scholar Sean O’Connor testified before Congress, the notice and takedown system is not working for any of its intended beneficiaries. The constant game of whack-a-mole renders the system essentially futile for copyright owners and creators, and it creates significant burdens for ISPs that want to comply—especially small to mid-level companies that can’t afford compliance staff. Worse still, by shielding service providers from liability, the DMCA creates perverse incentives where there’s little downside to ignoring infringing content. In fact, reviewing content could lead to an ISP having knowledge of infringement and losing its safe harbor.

Now that the Copyright Office’s review is underway, it’s somewhat strange to see some supporters claim that all is well. But has anything actually changed since the Office announced its study?  Of course not. The whack-a-mole problem remains, and the knowledge standards are still interpreted broadly to disproportionately favor ISPs. When one side says the system is working and the other side says it’s broken, the truth is that the system is not working well for everyone. Sprigman and Lemley can claim that the DMCA is “worth saving” only by downplaying the true plight of creators and copyright owners.

A concrete example of this struggle comes from the comments filed by Universal Music Group (UMG) as part of the Copyright Office’s study. UMG describes the painstaking efforts devoted to protect just one artist’s creative work. In October of 2014, UMG and Big Machine Records launched a joint offensive to protect Taylor Swift’s “1989.” A staff of UMG employees dedicated 100% of their time and resources to manually search for infringements on YouTube, SoundCloud, and Tumblr, and through March of 2016, they had sent over 66,000 DMCA takedown notices. Despite their considerable efforts, over 500,000 links to the album were identified, and “1989” was illegally downloaded nearly 1.4 million times from torrent sites.

Of course, this type of effort would be impossible to replicate for any works other than those that attract such massive attention. For most artists, the burden of monitoring the Internet and sending takedown notices would fall entirely on their shoulders, with no guarantee of putting a stop to the theft of their works. Sprigman and Lemley ignore these problems, instead claiming that since copyright owners sent “more than 500 million takedown requests just to Google last year,” we know that the “system is a powerful tool against pirated content.” That would be great, if true, but the reality is that those notices barely made a dent.

Sprigman and Lemley claim that the “genius of the DMCA” is that it “enables entertainment companies to turn piracy into legitimate revenue.” They give the example of “YouTube’s Content ID system,” which “gives copyright owners the opportunity to ‘claim’ their work and share in any advertising revenue rather than pull it off the site.” From the perspective of creators and copyright owners, the only “genius” of this system is that YouTube can legally present them with an unfair choice—suffer infringement and get nothing or monetize and get next to nothing.

While Sprigman and Lemley praise the “more than $1 billion” paid out by YouTube, the real question is how much more copyright owners and creators would have been paid in a properly functioning market. YouTube is consistently teeming with infringing videos—one recent report revealed that over 180 million infringing videos had been removed in 2014 alone. And the artists that YouTube’s largess supposedly benefits are loudly complaining about their exploitation. If Content ID is so great, why are so many creators and copyright owners upset with the arrangement? The monetization Google offers to copyright owners and artists is less than half of the royalties paid out by streaming services like Pandora, an amount that artists have denounced as already inequitable.

In her excellent piece on the fictions of the Content ID system, Grammy-winning artist Maria Schneider exposes Content ID as a way for Google to cash in by actually legitimizing and perpetuating piracy. She explains that a majority of creators that opt for monetization realize miserable percentages of ad revenue, and the continued illegal uploading of their music and content drives billions of users to YouTube’s platform. YouTube has turned the weakness of the DMCA into a system that exploits artists while offering embarrassingly lower royalty rates than what would be negotiated in a free market.

The current situation is untenable, and if change means “breaking” the Internet, then we should pull out the pickaxes and get to work. A system of notice and staydown, rather than just takedown, would help alleviate the constant and seemingly ineffectual vigilance required by the current system. By removing all copies of a protected work and blocking inevitable re-postings, ISPs would honor the original purpose of the DMCA while actually doing their part to earn the protection of the safe harbor provisions. Only by ensuring that targeted works do not resurface will ISPs respect the rights of those without whose content they would cease to exist.

How anyone can honestly say that the current notice and takedown system is working for copyright owners and creators is mystifying given the constant calls for reform from creators and the numerous critical comments filed with the Copyright Office. The incredible magnitude of takedown notices sent and the seemingly unstoppable reappearance of infringing works online are a clear signal that the system is completely failing those it was meant to protect. Creators and copyright owners deserve a better chance at protecting the fruits of their labors, and the DMCA needs to be changed so that it truly is a system “worth saving.”

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Copyright Internet Uncategorized

CloudFlare’s Desperate New Strategy to Protect Pirate Sites

a gavel lying on a table in front of booksSan Francisco-based CloudFlare has earned a somewhat dubious reputation in the online world. Website owners can set up CloudFlare in just a few minutes, gaining the performance, security, and privacy benefits the service provides. Traffic routed through CloudFlare’s global content delivery network is cached for faster delivery times and protected from numerous online threats. Pirate sites have flocked to the service because it hides their true identities from copyright owners by default. And it probably doesn’t hurt that CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince thinks that “censoring the Internet” is “creepy,” even “under a court order.”

Prince practices what he preaches, and CloudFlare has been all-too-ready to lend a helping hand to even the most notorious pirates. When The Pirate Bay rose from the ashes in early 2015, CloudFlare provided the site with services that helped manage its massive server loads. CloudFlare’s encryption technology even made it easy for users in the UK to circumvent the High Court’s ban ordering ISPs to block the pirate site. Amazingly, The Pirate Bay is now back in the United States, using its original thepiratebay.org Virginia-based domain and benefiting from CloudFlare’s robust services to make its criminal enterprise run smoothly worldwide.

Of course, the only reason CloudFlare can get away with supporting the world’s most-visited torrent site is because the DMCA is such a mess. Courts have set the bar so high that CloudFlare wouldn’t likely be found to have red flag knowledge of the massive amounts of infringement it certainly knows its service enables for globally-infamous criminal infringers like The Pirate Bay. Rather than taking the high road and refusing to work with obvious pirate sites, CloudFlare lawyers up when pushed and denies the supportive role that its service provides.

We saw this last year in the Grooveshark case. After the original Grooveshark site was found liable for willful infringement and agreed to shut down, copycat sites sprung up at different top-level domains such as grooveshark.io and grooveshark.pw. The plaintiffs obtained a temporary restraining order against the copycats, which registrars Namecheap and Dynadot promptly complied with by disabling some of the domains. But when the plaintiffs asked CloudFlare to stop providing services to some of the other copycats, they were met with firm resistance. The plaintiffs had to turn to the court for an order clarifying that the injunction against the copycat sites prevented CloudFlare from providing them services.

With the backing of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, CloudFlare put up a big fight. It denied that it was in “active concert or participation” with the copycats, which under Rule 65 would have made it bound by their existing injunction. CloudFlare argued that its services were merely passive and that the domains would still remain accessible even if its services were cut off. The district court rejected CloudFlare’s self-serving arguments, noting that it was in fact aiding and abetting the copycat sites by operating their authoritative domain name servers and optimizing their traffic worldwide. Since CloudFlare had actual notice of the injunction and was in “active concert or participation” with the enjoined copycats, it was also bound by their injunction under Rule 65.

Hit with what must have been the eye-opening reality that, under penalty of contempt, it couldn’t knowingly help its enjoined customer engage in the very wrong the court had ordered it to stop committing, one might think that CloudFlare would have become more respectful of court orders involving its customers. However, as recent developments in the MP3Skull case show, CloudFlare has decided to again take the low road in shirking its responsibility to the court. And its argument here as to why it’s beyond the court’s reach is even more desperate than before.

In April of 2015, several record label plaintiffs sued MP3Skull for copyright infringement, easily obtaining a default judgment when the defendants failed to respond to the suit. Earlier this year, the plaintiffs were granted a permanent injunction, which the defendants quickly flouted by setting up shop under several different top-level domains. Naturally, the common denominator of these multiple MP3Skull sites was that they used CloudFlare. The plaintiffs’ lawyers sent a copy of the injunction against the pirate sites to CloudFlare, asking it to honor the injunction and stop supplying services to the enjoined domains. But, as with Grooveshark, CloudFlare again refused to comply.

The record label plaintiffs have now gone back to the district court, filing a motion requesting clarification that CloudFlare is bound by the injunction against the MP3Skull sites. They argue that the “law is clear that CloudFlare’s continued provision of services to Defendants, with full knowledge of this Court’s Order, renders CloudFlare ‘in active concert or participation’ with Defendants,” and they point to the opinion in the Grooveshark case in support. According to the plaintiffs, the only issue is whether CloudFlare is aiding and abetting the enjoined defendants by providing them services.

CloudFlare opposes the motion, though it noticeably doesn’t deny that it’s in “active concert or participation” with the enjoined defendants. Instead, CloudFlare argues that, since this is a copyright case, any injunction against it must comply with the DMCA:

Section 512(j) prescribes specific standards and procedures for injunctions against service providers like CloudFlare in copyright cases. It places strict limits on injunctions against eligible service providers. 17 U.S.C. § 512(j)(1). It specifies criteria that courts “shall consider” when evaluating a request for injunctive relief against a service provider. 17 U.S.C. § 512(j)(2). And it requires that a service provider have notice and an opportunity to appear, before a party may bind it with an injunction. 17 U.S.C. § 512(j)(3). Plaintiffs ignored those requirements entirely.

The gist of CloudFlare’s argument is that Section 512(j) controls injunctions against service providers like itself, notwithstanding the fact that Rule 65 binds those in “active concert or participation” with an enjoined party. In other words, CloudFlare says that the DMCA gives service providers unique immunity from having to obey court-issued injunctions under the Federal Rules—a remarkable claim requiring remarkable proof. And the case law cited to back up this claim? None. Zip. Nada. CloudFlare fails to produce one single cite showing that any injunctive-relief statute, whether copyright or otherwise, has ever been deemed to preempt the longstanding rule that it’s contempt of court to aid and abet an enjoined defendant. The desperation is palpable.

The reason the DMCA doesn’t apply to CloudFlare is obvious. Section 512(j) states that it “shall apply in the case of any application for an injunction under section 502 against a service provider” that qualifies for the safe harbors. CloudFlare goes on for pages about how it’s a service provider that would qualify for the safe harbor defense if given the chance, but all of this misses the point: CloudFlare is not being enjoined. The only service provider being enjoined is MP3Skull—and that injunction was issued under Section 502 without the limitations set forth in Section 512(j) because MP3Skull didn’t even bother to show up and attempt to claim the safe harbors. But the plaintiffs have not sought an injunction against CloudFlare, which they could only do by naming CloudFlare as a party to the suit.

Since CloudFlare itself isn’t being enjoined under Section 502, Section 512(j) provides it no limitations. The issue is simply whether, under the Federal Rules, CloudFlare is bound by the injunction that has already been issued against the MP3Skull sites. Perhaps not wanting to get bench-slapped again on the aiding and abetting question under Rule 65, CloudFlare is taking an even lower road with this desperate new argument that it’s magically immune to court orders against its customers under the Federal Rules. The district court has yet to rule on the plaintiffs’ motion, but my guess is that it will make short work in reminding CloudFlare of the court’s true power to hold aiders and abettors in contempt.

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Copyright Innovation International Law Uncategorized

The European Union Extends Copyright in Design—and Critics Balk (Yet Again)

dictionary entry for the word "innovate"The European Union recently decided to support the productive labors of designers by extending legal protections of their works in all areas of copyright, design, and patent law. Just as past legislation in the United States extending copyright terms was attacked with histrionic allegations that this was merely rent-seeking behavior by politically powerful corporations, the EU’s extension of protections for designs have come under similar attack. In the US, the specter of Disney trying to keep “the Mouse” alive has become a stale trope trotted out in opposition to any sensible copyright protections. Thus, it is not a surprise that the same trope is being used to attack the EU’s new law. In both cases, the attack misses its target because it is rooted in a false assumption about why property rights are secured to innovators and creators.

First, a word about the change in European Union law. This law is important both in making creators’ rights more effective throughout the EU and in bringing those rights closer in harmony with EU intellectual property (IP) law as a whole. As of July 28, 2016, the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act extends the copyright for a designer’s work from 25 years to 70 years. (A six-month grace period in the UK has been granted to allow retailers to clear their stock of works that might be in question under the new Act.)

According to David Woods, a British lawyer, the EU’s changes aligned its copyright laws with those governing literature and music, providing uniform legal protections for all products of creative labors. Further, as Mr. Woods properly points out, “[t]he intent of the change to the legislation is to stop ‘exact’ copies of existing industrially designed artistic works”—a measure that he predicts will result in the closure of websites producing bargain basement, mass-produced copies of furniture, “as after all, this was their business model.” In sum, the legislation is directly aimed at illegal internet operations whose deliberate “business model” is to steal the fruits of the labors of those working in the design industries.

This copyright legislation secures to creators their highly-valued furniture design and thwarts piracy. As in the protection of all property rights, this spurs creativity and sustains livelihoods of professional creators. This is an example of how securing property rights of all types is a key requirement in a growing innovation economy and flourishing society.

Who could object to this? Surprisingly, some ersatz advocates for property rights, such as some libertarian academics like Alex Tabarrok. Tabarrok recently attacked the new EU design law with the tread-worn criticism that one hears from ideologically committed IP skeptics: “The point” of the revamped EU regulations, he declares, is “not to spur creativity but to protect the rents of a handful of people whose past designs turned out to have lasting value.” (One can hear the echoes of the rhetorically appealing, but false, claim that Disney was solely responsible for capturing Congress in keeping Mickey Mouse under legal wraps.)

In the abstract and without regard to recognizing how property rights function in the free market, Tabarrok’s criticism might seem plausible. But there’s a key mistake in it. The fallacy over which Tabarrok stumbles is assuming that the sole purpose of copyright is only to spur the creation of new works—no more, no less. According to Tabarrok, copyright is merely a carrot dangled in front of creators, who like Pavlov’s dog are supposed to be sparked into creative activity. Certainly, this is a function of IP rights, as it is with all property rights—promising to secure the fruits of productive labors, whether in a farm, books, or inventions, spurs people to create more of these valued assets.

But, like all property rights, copyright is not merely an incentive to create. All property rights serve the central function of securing to their owners the free use and disposition of the property, which is what leads to contracts and other exchanges in the free market that enhance everyone’s lives. Thus, copyright is vital to sustaining creators’ rights in reaping the rewards of their creative and valuable labors—when the works are disseminated in the market and purchased by consumers for their enjoyment and use.

Ironically, Tabarrok hints at this when he says, in what is meant to derogate copyright extension, that “the actual argument for copyright runs—We have lots of popular designs and we need to keep selling them at a high price.” Indeed, the argument for copyright as such could be restated in the same way: “we have lots of popular designs and we should be allowed to sell them at the price they command in the market,” irrespective of whether that price seems “high.”

Tabarrok looks to support his argument with the example of mid-century design classics, such as Charles Eames chairs and Arco lamps. These works have become familiar to the public through the sale of replicas sold by furniture retailers, such as Design Within Reach in the US and Swivel in the UK. Another classic example is the Barcelona chair, an exquisite and iconic work designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. While the officially licensed version of the Barcelona chair sells at the Conran Shop in the UK for around £5,755, a replica can be found on websites such as Swivel for around £455.

The stark difference in price illustrates vividly why high-level furniture and “lifestyle” designers such as Sir Terence Conran, and fashion designers such as Stella McCartney, support the new EU law: their professional livelihood—their ability to benefit from specialization and division of labor, which Adam Smith taught us is the key to a flourishing free market—rests on their ability to profit from the fruits of their creative labors in a commercial economy. Their right to sell their designs at the prices they seek in the marketplace does not preclude the design and dissemination of new, original articles of design that are inspired by the inimitable works of the mid-century moderns referenced by Tabarrok. But their property rights should preclude the sale of pirated knock-offs, which bring nothing to the table in terms of originality, inspiration, or hard work and are simply cheap copies.

It is not surprising that Tabarrok and others of his ilk continue to resort to ill-founded and unsubstantiated attacks upon IP rights on the dubious grounds that at some point these rights do not directly encourage innovation. This is highly misleading, because the same can be said about all property rights. This rhetorical move also makes it seem like Tabarrok is on the “pro” side of creation and innovation, which is dissembling rhetoric at its best.

Tabarrok’s critique, however, rests on a misconceived view of the function of property rights as solely incentivizing creation. Patents and copyrights are property rights, and like all property rights, they do not merely incentivize creation and innovation. They serve the important function of enabling creators to earn a livelihood from their productive labors by securing to them the same rights of all property owners to control the conditions in which their property is sold in the marketplace. This reflects the longstanding economic principle that a growing free market and flourishing society requires securing to property owners the fruits of their labors – surely a central tenet of libertarianism!

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Administrative Agency Commercialization Copyright Copyright Licensing Infringement Innovation Internet Legislation Supreme Court Uncategorized

Letter on FCC Set-Top Box Regulation Once Again Confuses the Issue

Washington, D.C. at nightLast week, a group of law professors wrote a letter to the acting Librarian of Congress in which they claim that the current FCC proposal to regulate cable video navigation systems does not deprive copyright owners of the exclusive rights guaranteed by the Copyright Act. The letter repeats arguments from response comments they  filed along with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), accusing the Copyright Office of misinterpreting the scope of copyright law and once again bringing up Sony v. Universal to insist that copyright owners are overstepping their bounds. Unfortunately, the IP professors’ recurring reliance on Sony is misplaced, as the 30-year-old case does not address the most significant and troubling copyright violations that will result from the FCC’s proposed rules.

In 1984, the Supreme Court in Sony held that recording television shows on a personal VCR was an act of “time-shifting” and therefor did not constitute copyright infringement. The court also ruled that contributory liability requires knowledge, and such knowledge will not be imputed to a defendant based solely on the characteristics or design of a distributed product if that product is “capable of substantial noninfringing uses.” But while this precedent remains good law today, it does not apply to the real concerns creators and copyright owners have with the FCC’s attempt to redistribute their works without authorization.

The FCC’s proposed rules would require pay-TV providers to send copyrighted, licensed TV programs to third parties, even if the transmission would violate the agreements that pay-TV providers carefully negotiated with copyright owners. A different group of IP scholars recently explained to the FCC that by forcing pay-TV providers to exceed the scope of their licenses, the proposed rules effectively create a zero-rate compulsory license and undermine the property rights of creators and copyright owners. The compulsory license would benefit third-party recipients of the TV programs who have no contractual relationship with either the copyright owners or pay-TV providers, depriving creators and copyright owners of the right to license their works on their own terms.

This unauthorized siphoning and redistribution of copyrighted works would occur well before the programming reaches the in-home navigational device, a fact that the authors of the recent letter to the Librarian of Congress either don’t understand, or choose to ignore. Creators and copyright owners are not attempting to “exert control over the market for video receivers,” as the letter suggests. The manufacture and distribution of innovative devices that allow consumers to access the programming to which they subscribe is something that copyright owners and creators embrace, and a thriving market for such devices already exists.

As more consumers resort to cord cutting, countless options have become available in terms of navigational devices and on-demand streaming services. Apple TV, Roku, Nexus Player and Amazon Fire Stick are just a few of the digital media players consumers can choose from, and more advanced devices are  always being released. But while the creative community supports the development of these devices, it is the circumvention of existing licenses and disregard for the rights of creators to control their works that has artists and copyright owners worried.

Sony has become a rallying cry for those arguing that copyright owners are attempting to control and stymie the development of new devices and technologies, but these critics neglect the substantial problems presented by the transmission of digital media that Sony couldn’t predict and does not address. In the era of the VCR, there was no Internet over which television was broadcast into the home. In 1984, once a VCR manufacturer sold a unit, they ceased to have any control over the use of the machine. Consumers could use VCRs to record television or play video cassettes as they pleased, and the manufacturer wouldn’t benefit from their activity either way.

The difference with the current navigation device manufacturers is that they will receive copyrighted TV programs to which they’ll have unbridled liberty to repackage and control before sending them to the in-home navigation device. The third-party device manufacturers will not only be able to tamper with the channel placement designed to protect viewer experience and brand value, they will also be able to insert their own advertising into the delivery of the content, reducing pay-tv ad revenue and the value of the license agreements that copyright owners negotiate with pay-TV providers. The FCC’s proposal isn’t really about navigational devices, it’s about the control of creative works and the building of services around TV programs that the FCC plans to distribute to third parties free of any obligation to the owners and creators of those programs.

The authors of the letter conflate two distinct issues, misleading influential decision makers that may not be as well versed in the intricacies of copyright law. By stubbornly comparing the copyright issues surrounding the FCC’s proposed rules to those considered by the Supreme Court in Sony, they craftily try to divert attention away from the real matter at hand: Not what consumers do with the creative works they access in the privacy of their own homes, but how those works are delivered to consumers’ homes in the first place.

It’s curious that after many rounds of back-and-forth comments discussing the FCC’s proposal, proponents of the rules still refuse to address this primary copyright concern that has been continuously raised by creators and copyright owners in corresponding comments, articles, and letters (see also here, here, here, and here). Perhaps the authors of the recent letter simply do not grasp the real implications of the FCC’s plan to seize and redistribute copyrighted content, but given their years of copyright law experience, that is unlikely. More probable is that they recognize the complications inherent in the proposal, but do not have a good answer to the questions raised by the proposal’s critics, so they choose instead to cloud the issue with a similar-sounding but separate issue. But if they truly want to make progress in the set-top box debate and clear the way for copyright compliant navigational devices, they’ll need to do more than fall back on the same, irrelevant arguments.

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Copyright Infringement Internet Uncategorized

The Dangerous Combination of Content Theft and Malware

Cross-posted from the Mister Copyright blog.

circuit boardMalware, short for malicious software, has been used to infiltrate and contaminate computers since the early 1980s. But what began as relatively benign software designed to prank and annoy users has developed into a variety of hostile programs intended to hijack, steal, extort, and attack. Disguised software including computer viruses, worms, trojan horses, ransomware, spyware, adware, and other malicious programs have flooded the Internet, allowing online criminals to profit from illicit activity while inflicting enormous costs on businesses, governments and individual consumers.

Purveyors of malware target unsavory websites to embed and distribute their programs, often making deals with those in the business of disseminating stolen content. Content theft websites that appear online through legitimate hosting and content delivery systems are frequently riddled with devious malware that infect the computers of users looking to download or stream pirated music, movie and television shows.

Last week, the Digital Citizens Alliance (DCA) published a report detailing how US tech companies are allowing cyber criminals to use their services to perform a myriad of illegal exploits. Enabling Malware focuses on how stolen content is being used as bait to infect users’ computers and how domestic hosting and content delivery companies are permitting online criminals to profit from the spread of dangerous malware.

Employing the expertise of Internet security firm RiskIQ, the report found that 1 in 3 content theft websites expose users to infectious malware and that visitors are 28 times more likely to encounter malware on content theft sites than mainstream, legitimate websites. And although these nefarious websites are usually created and maintained by overseas operators, they rely on North America hosting companies to function.

It’s a tricky partnership because while the hosting companies are not breaking the law by allowing disreputable websites to make us of their services, they are facilitating criminal networks whose activities could have catastrophic consequences. The report likens these service companies to landlords who turn a blind eye to the illegal activity of a renter. The issue is the same one being examined by the Copyright Office in its DMCA 512 study: When does a service provider have the requisite knowledge of illicit activity to trigger a duty to address the problem?

But while Section 512 of the DMCA hopes to combat copyright infringement online, the introduction of malware to content theft sites has consequences more far-reaching and dire than the dissemination of stolen works. Once malware infiltrates a system and hackers are able to take over, the results can be disastrous. The report details a wide range of criminal activity that can result from malware infection including the theft of bank credentials and credit card information that is then subsequently sold online, locking computers and demanding ransoms to return access, and hijacking webcams to film users without consent. The report warns:

[T]hese companies are now contributing to a growing issue for Americans: the threat of computer infections, the rise of identity theft and loss of financial information. The U.S. Department of Justice reports that 16.2 million U.S. consumers have been victimized by identity theft, with financial losses totaling over $24.7 billion.

According to the study, one of the most notorious companies enabling the websites that spread malware is CloudFlare. Marketing itself as a global content protection and security service provider, CloudFlare actually conceals a website’s true hosting information, inserting their network information instead. This allows for notorious content theft websites to mask information related to their actual hosting companies, making it more difficult to identify those complicit in their illegal activity.

Employing CloudFlare’s services are websites like Putlockerr.io, which offers a wide array of pirated movies for download. But when a user attempts to watch a movie via Putlocker, they download more than pirated content. After a user clicks to watch a movie, they are redirected to a new site that prompts them to download a new video player in order to view the content. This download is in fact a mechanism to deliver the malware that will wreak havoc on their system.

One of the worst distributors of malware identified by RiskIQ was watchfreemoviesonline.top. According to the study, the websites malware exposure rate was 32 percent and baited users into downloading the infectious software by offering popular movies like Captain America: Civil War in advance of its theatrical release. Watchfreemoviesonline.top uses Hawk Host, a company offering services similar to CloudFlare, to hide information about their actual hosting affiliations.

The Digital Citizens Alliance contacted both CloudFlare and Hawk Host to inform them of the findings of the RiskIQ report, and received differing responses. After being presented with clear evidence of the shady and illegal activities of watchfreemoviesonline.top, Hawk Host acknowledged that the site violated their terms of service and told the DCA that the site would come down. Hawk Host also agreed to meet with DCA researches to further discuss the RiskIQ report.

Unfortunately, the DCA’s interaction with CloudFlare was not as encouraging. In response to an email informing the company of the findings of the RiskIQ report, CloudFlare responded with a vague comment disclaiming any responsibility for the content of their client websites.

In the past few years, there’s been progress among service companies’ accountability efforts, with many refusing to deal with criminal websites. Payment providers like PayPal and Visa have stopped permitting illicit websites to use their services, and online advertisers have vowed to stop dealing with infamous content theft sites. But in order to eradicate content theft sites and the malware they propagate, the companies that help veil their identities and enable criminal activity must be help accountable.

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Copyright Infringement Internet Uncategorized

Three Years Later, DMCA Still Just as Broken

By Matthew Barblan & Kevin Madigan

cameraIn 2013, CPIP published a policy brief by Professor Bruce Boyden exposing the DMCA notice and takedown system as outdated and in need of reform. The Failure of the DMCA Notice and Takedown System explained that while Section 512 of the DMCA was intended as a way for copyright owners and service providers to work together to fight infringement in the digital age, the notice and takedown system has been largely ineffective in managing the ever-increasing amount of piracy.

Three years later, the DMCA is still just as broken. Since we published the brief, courts have further diminished service providers’ responsibility to cooperate with copyright owners to detect and deter infringement, rendering the DMCA even more fruitless and desperately in need of retooling.

Boyden explained the fundamental problems with the system at the time, beginning with the fact that “despite all the notice, there is precious little takedown to show for it. Unless a site employs some sort of content filtering technology, the same content typically re-appears within hours after it is removed.” The notice and takedown system is particularly unsuited for the twenty-first century, where “infringement is persistent, ubiquitous, and gargantuan in scale. It is a problem that needs to be policed” with more than just takedown notices that don’t give copyright owners “a single day when the content is not available on the most heavily trafficked sites.”

Boyden noted that “even for the largest media companies with the most resources at their disposal, attempting to purge a site of even a fraction of the highest-value content is like trying to bail out an oil tanker with a thimble.” And Boyden pointed out that the courts hadn’t made the situation any better: “The DMCA’s unsuitability as a tool to manage chronic, persistent, and pervasive infringement is particularly apparent after recent decisions from the Second and Ninth Circuit that construed the duty of website owners very narrowly under Section 512.”

To further illustrate his point, Boyden collected data on takedown notices sent by MPAA companies and counter-notices received. Between March and August of 2013, MPAA companies sent takedown notices for over 25 million infringing URLs and received only 8 counter-notices in response. That’s a counter-notice rate of 0.000032%, suggesting that the astronomical volume of notices represents a likewise astronomical volume of infringement rather than overly-aggressive notice-sending.

Grand Totals. Infringing URLs: 25,235,151. URLs Sent to Websites: 13,238,860. URLs Sent to Search Engines: 11,996,291. Counter-Notices Received: 8.

Boyden concluded:

The impossibility of keeping up with new [infringing] uploads means that an online service provider can create a site aimed at and dedicated to hosting infringing copyrighted works, comply with every takedown notice, and still benefit from the safe harbor, as long as its intent remains hidden. If the site has enough users, any popular content removed will be supplanted by new copies almost immediately.

Sadly, three years later the “chronic, persistent, and pervasive” infringement that Boyden described continues, with stolen copyrighted works popping up on sites almost immediately after being taken down. Google Search—one product of one company—has receive nearly 90 million takedown notices this month alone. The situation has gotten so bad that last week a long list of artists, including Paul McCartney and Taylor Swift, signed a digital petition to bring attention to a broken DMCA system that allows companies like YouTube to benefit from infringement at the expense of songwriters and artists.

The artists’ main message: “The existing laws threaten the continued viability of songwriters and recording artists to survive from the creation of music.” They note that “the tech companies who benefit from the DMCA today were not the intended protectorate when it was signed into law nearly two decades ago,” and they ask Congress to “enact sensible reform that balances the interests of creators with the interests of the companies who exploit music for their financial enrichment.”

Recognizing the growing frustration with the DMCA, the U.S. Copyright Office initiated a study earlier this year to examine whether the statute is fulfilling its purpose. We submitted comments to the Copyright Office on behalf of a group of copyright law scholars, noting that courts have disrupted the balance Congress sought to create when it enacted the DMCA. In particular, courts have eliminated any incentive for service providers to work with copyright owners to develop policies and procedures to prevent or curb piracy online. In just one example of how deeply courts have distorted congressional intent, under courts’ current interpretation of the DMCA, search engines can continue to index even obviously infringing sites like The Pirate Bay with no fear of potential of liability.

Adding insult to injury, courts have recently shifted the balance of power even further away from artists and towards service providers, making it easier than ever for companies to enable and profit from infringement while turning a blind eye—or even encouraging—piracy on their sites. In this month’s Capitol Records v. Vimeo decision, for example, the Second Circuit extended the DMCA safe harbor to Vimeo despite smoking-gun evidence that Vimeo employees encouraged users to post stolen works on their site and had viewed the illicit videos at issue in the suit. In a jaw-dropping opinion, the court let Vimeo off the hook simply because the evidence of Vimeo employees encouraging infringement wasn’t directly tied to the specific infringing videos that plaintiffs included in their suit.

CPIP’s Devlin Hartline explains:

After Capitol Records v. Vimeo: A service provider can encourage its users to infringe on a massive scale, and so long as the infringement it encourages isn’t the specific infringement it gets sued for, it wins on the safe harbor defense at summary judgment. This is so even if there’s copious evidence that its employees viewed and interacted with the specific infringing material at issue. No jury will ever get to weigh all of the evidence and decide whether the infringement is obvious. At the same time, any proactive steps taken by the service provider will potentially open it up to liability for having actual knowledge, so the incentive is to do as little as possible to proactively “detect and deal” with piracy. This is not at all what Congress intended. It lets bad faith service providers trample the rights of copyright owners with impunity.

As courts continue to gut the DMCA, making it harder than ever for artists to protect their property and livelihoods, Congress would be wise to heed Bruce Boyden’s advice from three years ago: “It is long past time for a retooling of the notice and takedown regime.”

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Copyright Infringement Internet Uncategorized

Second Circuit Deepens Red Flag Knowledge Circuit Split in Vimeo

a gavel lying on a table in front of booksThe Second Circuit’s recent opinion in Capitol Records v. Vimeo is, to put it mildly, pretty bad. From its convoluted reasoning that copyrights under state law for pre-1972 sound recordings are limited by the DMCA safe harbors, despite the explicit statement in Section 301(c) that “rights or remedies” under state law “shall not be annulled or limited” by the Copyright Act, to its gutting of red flag knowledge by limiting it to the nearly-impossible situation where a service provider actually knows that a specific use of an entire copyrighted work is neither fair nor licensed yet somehow doesn’t also surmise that it’s infringing, it’s hard to see how either result is compelled by the statutes, much less how it was intended by Congress. On the latter point, the Second Circuit in essence has written red flag knowledge out of the statute, reducing the DMCA to a mere notice-and-takedown regime. The reality is that Congress expected red flag knowledge to do far more work, incentivizing service providers to take action in the face of a red flag—even without a notice.

If there’s any good to come from Vimeo, it might only be that the Second Circuit has now deepened the circuit split with the Ninth Circuit in Columbia Pictures v. Fung on two issues related to red flag knowledge. Under the statute, red flag knowledge exists when a service provider is “aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent.” The two circuits are already split on the issue of whether red flag knowledge must pertain to the particular works that are being sued over in the suit. And now with Vimeo, the circuits are split on the issue of whether a service provider can gain red flag knowledge just by looking at an infringing work. The deeper the circuit split, the greater the chance an appeal will make it to the Supreme Court, which would hopefully clean up the current red flag knowledge mess.

In Fung, the defendant, Gary Fung, operated several piracy havens, including isoHunt, TorrentBox, Podtropolis, and eDonkey. The district court found Fung liable for inducement under MGM v. Grokster and denied him safe harbor protection under the DMCA. The district court’s decision came in 2009, two years before the Ninth Circuit first held in UMG v. Shelter Capital that red flag knowledge requires “specific knowledge of particular infringing activity.” It also came two-and-a-half years before the Second Circuit held in Viacom v. YouTube that red flag knowledge is only relevant if it pertains to the works-in-suit. Regardless, since the vast majority of content available on Fung’s sites was copyrighted, including specific content that he himself had downloaded, the district court held that Fung hadn’t even raised a triable issue of fact as to whether he had red flag knowledge. The fact that none of the works he had been sued over were the same as the ones he had been found to have red flag knowledge of was irrelevant.

On appeal, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s holding that Fung had red flag knowledge as a matter of law. The opinion came out just one week after the same panel of judges issued a superseding opinion in UMG v. Shelter Capital reiterating that red flag knowledge requires “specific knowledge of particular infringing activity.” Importantly, in applying that standard to Fung, the Ninth Circuit did not say that the specific knowledge had to be of the particular works-in-suit. For whatever reason, Fung had failed to argue otherwise. Google even filed an amicus brief supporting the plaintiffs but nonetheless arguing that “the DMCA’s knowledge standards are specific and focus on the particular material that the plaintiff is suing about.” Apparently unaware that this actually helped his case, Fung filed a supplemental brief calling Google’s argument “fallacious.”

In the Ninth Circuit’s opinion, even though red flag knowledge had to relate to particular infringing activity, that activity did not have to involve the particular works-in-suit. Moreover, the Ninth Circuit held that the “material in question was sufficiently current and well-known that it would have been objectively obvious to a reasonable person” that it was “both copyrighted and not licensed to random members of the public.” Since Fung failed to expeditiously remove the particular material of which he had red flag knowledge, he lost his safe harbor protection across the board. Thus, the Ninth Circuit in Fung held that: (1) red flag knowledge that strips a service provider of its entire safe harbor protection does not have to pertain to the particular works-in-suit, and (2) material can be so “current and well-known” that its infringing nature would be “objectively obvious to a reasonable person.”

The Second Circuit in Vimeo parted ways with the Ninth Circuit on these two holdings. Since the “evidence was not shown to relate to any of the videos at issue in this suit,” the Second Circuit held that it was “insufficient to justify a finding of red flag knowledge . . . as to those specific videos.” The Second Circuit thus applied the red flag knowledge standard on a work-by-work basis, in direct contrast to the Ninth Circuit in Fung. Also, the Second Circuit held that “the mere fact that a video contains all or substantially all of a piece of recognizable, or even famous, copyrighted music” and was “viewed in its entirety” by an “employee of a service provider” was not enough “to sustain the copyright owner’s burden of showing red flag knowledge.” The court added that even “an employee who was a copyright expert cannot be expected to know when use of a copyrighted song has been licensed.” So while the Ninth Circuit said it would have been objectively obvious to Fung that particular works were infringing, the Second Circuit in Vimeo set the bar far higher.

Curiously, the Second Circuit in Vimeo didn’t even mention Fung, despite the fact that it was deepening the circuit split with the Ninth Circuit. One wonders whether the omission was intentional. Either way, the circuit split has only gotten deeper. While in the Ninth Circuit an infringement can be so obvious that a court can find that a service provider had red flag knowledge without even sending it to a jury, the Second Circuit says that courts can’t let a jury decide whether a service provider had red flag knowledge even with the most obvious of infringements. And while in the Ninth Circuit a service provider loses its entire safe harbor for failing to remove an obvious infringement that it hasn’t been sued over, the Second Circuit says that red flag knowledge has to be determined on a work-by-work basis for only the works-in-suit. Given this growing divide between the Second and Ninth Circuits, it seems like only a matter of time before the Supreme Court will weigh in on the red flag knowledge standard. And if the Court does finally weigh in, one hopes it will put common sense back into the DMCA.

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Copyright Infringement Internet Uncategorized

Advertiser Pledge Sets Example of Accountability in the Fight Against Piracy

Cross-posted from the Mister Copyright blog.

cameraIt should come as no surprise that popular websites make money by hosting advertisements. Anyone surfing the web has undoubtedly been bombarded with ads when visiting certain sites, and for websites that offer free services or user experiences, advertisements are often the only way to generate revenue. Unfortunately, websites that promote and distribute pirated material also attract advertisers to help fund their illicit enterprises, and despite a recent push for awareness and response to these sites, legitimate advertisers, search engines, and domain name registrars continue to enable them to profit from flagrant copyright infringement.

A 2014 study by the Digital Citizens Alliance found that ad-sponsored content theft is a big and growing business. Even after a year that saw the shutdown of some of the most notorious file-sharing websites, an examination of 589 illicit websites found aggregate annual advertising revenues of $209 million. Premium brand advertising also rose from 89 observed brands in 2013 to 132 to in 2014.

The transition from downloading to streaming as the preferred method of consuming entertainment has led to content thieves taking advantage of higher advertising rates, as the cost of advertising during a video stream is far greater than a traditional display ad. Additionally, the Digital Citizens Alliance stresses that websites are easily able to ditch a domain name targeted by authorities and set up shop under a new one, contributing to the never-ending whack-a-mole nature of online piracy:

The content theft industry’s low barriers to entry and the ability of operators to switch domains quickly make it easy for new sites to fill the void left by those that do get shut down, and to evade enforcement.

The presence of recognizable brand advertisements on websites involved in illegal activity does damage far beyond lining the pockets of those distributing the unauthorized works. When users visit a website in search of music, a television show, or movie, and they see the creative work (or links to the work) displayed alongside professional, recognizable advertisements, the advertisements lend legitimacy to the website. This can be especially dangerous for younger or less-informed users who have no idea that downloading or streaming the creative works through one of these websites is copyright infringement that will ultimately harm creators and artists.

The confusion these ad placements create is similar to the misperceptions furthered by search engines and domain name registrars that have made little effort to preclude pirate websites from taking advantage of their services. Despite promises to remove them from their search results, Google continues to display links to pirate websites alongside legitimate links in its results, often displaying the illicit links at the very top of the search results.

Filmmaker and artists’ rights activist Ellen Seidler recently exposed Google’s unwillingness to remove links to websites that distribute unauthorized creative works when she ran a simple Google search for her film And Then Came Lola. As she relates, not only was the film’s official website nowhere to be found among the first page of results, the list was made up of many websites offering pirated versions of the film. Sadly, most people searching for Ellen’s movie would not be able to immediately distinguish between legitimate and illicit links and would likely be steered towards a pirate website.

Domain name registrars have also added to the confusion surrounding the legitimacy of certain infamous pirate sites by allowing them to play domain name musical chairs and evade prosecution. The Pirate Bay—one of the most notorious file-sharing websites—has operated using domain names from 14 different countries, jumping from domain to domain name to stay online in the face of prosecution. Copyright Alliance CEO Keith Kupferschmid warns against providing sanctuary to sites like The Pirate Bay, revealing that the website recently returned to its original .org domain run by the U.S.-based Public Interest Registry (PIR):

It is shocking that a domain name registry in the United States – one that is dedicated to “the public interest” – is allowing a blatantly illegal site to have a home on the .org domain. This is especially disturbing given that the operators of The Pirate Bay have been found guilty of criminal copyright infringement, The Pirate Bay domain names have been seized or suspended around the globe, and even its co-founder, Peter Sunde, has walked away from it.

Despite these alarming trends in the facilitation of pirate websites, there have been some recent initiatives to deter companies from doing business with illicit websites. One notable initiative is the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG). A joint effort by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s), and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), TAG was formed “to create transparency in the business relationships and transactions that undergird the digital ad industry, while continuing to enable innovation.” In 2015, TAG announced the launch of the Brand Integrity Program Against Piracy—an effort to help advertisers and advertising agencies keep their ads off websites that promote or distribute counterfeit goods or pirated content.

TAG’s mission has resonated with both advertisers and ISPs, demonstrated by a recent announcement that dozens of leading ad agencies, as well as Google and GoDaddy, have taken TAG’s Anti-Piracy Pledge. The Pledge includes a vow to curb the placement of digital advertising on websites associated with the unauthorized distribution of materials and lists the following actions that companies can take to ensure compliance:

(i) directly employing the services of validated Digital Advertising Assurance Providers;

(ii) directly employing advertising placement services that carry the TAG logo “Certified Against Piracy”; and/or

(iii) placing online advertisements through Advertising Agencies that do business exclusively with advertising placement services that carry the TAG logo “Certified Against Piracy

TAG created Digital Advertising Assurance Providers (DAAPs) as part of its Brand Integrity Program to help advertisers identify and weed out websites that do not meet their brand standards. The DAAPs are validated technology companies that the advertisers can employ to gauge the level of risk they are comfortable with and then eliminate websites and other properties that do not meet the advertisers’ standards for risk of infringement.

It’s difficult to measure how harmful advertising on illicit websites is to creators and copyright owners, but it’s not a stretch to presume that without ad revenue, many pirate sites would lose their incentive to operate. In her call to action to marketers, Hannibal executive producer Martha De Laurentiis lays out the destructive effect piracy has on the creative community:

It forces companies to either shrink their production budgets or commit to fewer, less risky projects. And ultimately, it harms audiences by limiting the types of stories that creatives can tell.

De Laurentiis explains that these pirate sites bring in millions in advertising dollars a year, and because they don’t pay for distribution rights for the creative works they steal, profit margins are estimated at around 90%. Potential profits of this scale are irresistible to those behind the pirate sites, but with a little vigilance and responsibility these incentives could be eliminated.

The co-chairs of the International Creativity and Theft-Prevention Caucus, Senator Orrin Hatch, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Congressman Bob Goodlatte, and Congressman Adam Schiff, recently praised TAG for its promotion of the Anti-Piracy Pledge, and it seems like the movement for more responsibility in digital advertising is gaining traction. But domain name registrars and search engine services need to follow the example set by advertisers and establish accountability and awareness in their sectors. Only when these services refuse to aid websites that distribute stolen copyrighted works will real progress be made in the fight against digital piracy.

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Copyright Infringement Internet Uncategorized

Capitol Records v. Vimeo: Courts Should Stop Coddling Bad Actors in Copyright Cases

Here’s a brief excerpt of my new post that was published on IPWatchdog:

Here’s where we are after Capitol Records v. Vimeo: A service provider can encourage its users to infringe on a massive scale, and so long as the infringement it encourages isn’t the specific infringement it gets sued for, it wins on the safe harbor defense at summary judgment. This is so even if there’s copious evidence that its employees viewed and interacted with the specific infringing material at issue. No jury will ever get to weigh all of the evidence and decide whether the infringement is obvious. At the same time, any proactive steps taken by the service provider will potentially open it up to liability for having actual knowledge, so the incentive is to do as little as possible to proactively “detect and deal” with piracy. This is not at all what Congress intended. It lets bad faith service providers trample the rights of copyright owners with impunity.

To read the rest of this post, please visit IPWatchdog.