Category: Internet

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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.

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Administrative Agency Copyright Infringement Innovation Internet Uncategorized

IP Scholars to FCC: It’s Not About "The Box"

Washington, D.C. at nightThis past April, we joined other IP scholars in explaining how the FCC’s proposed set-top box rules would undermine the property rights of creators and copyright owners. In reply comments filed last month, the EFF and a group of IP academics argued that the proposed rules would not implicate any copyright owners’ exclusive rights. Yesterday, we filed an ex parte letter with the Commissioners pointing out why this is wrong. The full letter is copied below.

Dear Chairman Wheeler and Commissioners Clyburn, Rosenworcel, Pai and O’Rielly:

On April 22, 2016, the undersigned intellectual property law scholars submitted comments to the FCC in response to the notice of proposed rulemaking in the matter of “Expanding Consumers’ Video Navigation Choices; Commercial Availability of Navigation Devices.” Our comments expressed concerns with the proposed rules’ harmful impact on the property rights of creators and copyright owners. Specifically, we warned that the Commission’s proposed rules would undermine the exclusive property rights guaranteed to copyright owners under the Copyright Act by severely limiting their ability to determine whom to license their property rights to and on what terms. In so doing, the proposed rules risk fundamentally disrupting the vibrant creative ecosystem that those property rights support.

Together with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), another group of intellectual property law academics submitted reply comments framed as a rebuttal to the many comments that dutifully explained how the Commission’s proposed rules would violate copyright law and imperil the property rights of creators and copyright owners. The EFF/professors offer “observations” on copyright law and conclude that “the proposed rules are consistent with copyright in both letter and spirit.” To reach this conclusion, the EFF/professors broadly defend navigational devices, arguing that “products and services that touch copyrighted works do not infringe copyright, and do not require a license,” and that the “devices and services under the proposed rules” would be non-infringing just like televisions and VCRs.

Surprisingly, despite claiming that the proposed rules are consistent with copyright law, the EFF/professors fail to address the primary copyright concern raised by us and by many other commenters. By focusing on the navigational devices themselves, rather than on how creative works are delivered to those devices, the EFF/professors perform a sleight of hand that masks the real problem. The issue is not what consumers do with the creative works they receive in the privacy of their own homes—the issue is how those creative works are delivered to consumers’ homes in the first place.

The creative works that pay-TV consumers watch on their televisions come from multiple sources, including satellite, cable, and telephony-based transmissions. These transmissions are public performances or public distributions, and as a result, they must be licensed. Ignoring this simple principle of copyright law, the Commission would require pay-TV providers to send copyrighted works to third parties even if doing so exceeds the scope of pay-TV providers’ licenses with copyright owners. By forcing pay-TV providers to exceed the scope of their licenses, the proposed rules would undermine the property rights of creators and copyright owners, effectively creating a zero-rate compulsory license to the benefit of third parties that have no contractual relationship with either copyright owners or pay-TV providers that copyright owners license their works to. Furthermore, the Commission seeks to create this zero-rate compulsory license despite lacking any authority to do so; the Communications Act certainly does not give the Commission authority to amend the Copyright Act and create a new compulsory license for copyrighted works.

The reply comments of the EFF/professors do not address this concern at all. Committing the bulk of their reply to a broad discussion articulating their principles for copyright law, the EFF/professors fail to respond to the distinct copyright issues that inevitably result from this newly-created compulsory license. It is unclear why the EFF/professors do not address this issue, as it was echoed again and again in the comments to which they purport to respond. Because the proposed rules would brazenly undercut copyright owners’ property rights, we believe it is important to call attention to the inability of the EFF/professors to even mention this fundamental problem in their response.

Put simply, the proposed rules would take away the ability of creators and copyright owners to license their works on their own terms. It would give third parties all of the benefits afforded to pay-TV providers by their agreements with copyright owners without the burdens of paying a license or agreeing to the underlying contract terms. This isn’t about “the box,” and it isn’t about what consumers do with the creative works they receive in their homes. The issue is what goes into “the box,” and more importantly, how it gets there. That the EFF/professors ignore this primary issue speaks volumes. The fact that third parties currently need a license from copyright owners to do the very things the proposed rules would countenance demonstrates that the rules would undermine the property rights of creators and copyright owners.

The EFF/professors properly note that the “ultimate goal” of copyright is to benefit the public good. What they fail to understand is that by securing to artists and creators property rights in the fruits of their labors, copyright serves the interests of creators and the public alike, fulfilling its constitutional purpose and forming the bedrock of our creative economy. We urge the Commission to consider and address—as the EFF/professors do not—how the proposed rules inappropriately interfere with the property rights of creators and copyright owners and the damage they stand to cause to our diverse and vibrant creative marketplace.

To download our letter to the FCC, please click here.

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Copyright Infringement Internet Uncategorized

Radiohead Video Makes Unauthorized Use of Fictional Characters

Cross-posted from the Mister Copyright blog.

Last month, Radiohead released their ninth studio album, A Moon Shaped Pool, after a five-year hiatus from recording. In true Radiohead fashion, the album’s release was preceded by a unique succession of mysterious social media postings, teaser artwork and music videos for the singles Burn the Witch and Daydreaming.

The Burn the Witch video was shot in stop-motion animation and features an alarming narrative in which an outsider is welcomed into a seemingly idyllic village, only later to be burned alive inside of a wicker man structure. While the creators of the video have acknowledged that the story is an allegory for the current migrant crisis in Europe, viewers have noticed something suspicious about the video unrelated to the chilling subject matter.

Burn the Witch uses claymation figures to portray its characters and soon after the video’s debut, viewers began recognizing similarities to Trumptonshire, a stop-motion BBC children’s television series from the 1960s. The Trumptonshire series—which includes Trumpton, Camberwick Green and Chigley—depicts daily life in a small, English country town and features recurring characters such as a mayor, doctor and fireman. As a children’s program, the storylines typically involved simple domestic problems that were always resolved in a friendly manner.

Given Radiohead’s popularity and the anticipation surrounding the release of their new album, it wasn’t long before some of those involved with Trumptonshire were made aware of the Burn the Witch video and voiced their displeasure. William Mollett, the son-in-law of creator Gordon Murray, expressed his disgust with the unsettling video and hinted at future legal action for what he believes is a copyright violation.

Radiohead should have sought our consent as we consider this a tarnishing of the brand. It is not something we would have authorized. We consider that there is a breach of copyright and we are deciding what to do next.

While the creators of cheery Trumptonshire may not appreciate an association with the dark Radiohead video, at first glance it’s not a case of clear-cut copyright infringement. The creators of Trumptonshire certainly can’t claim copyright in using claymation characters to express an idea, and the trope of an idyllic small village with a mayor, doctor and fireman would also not be protectable. These elements would be considered scènes à faire, or “scenes that must be done,” in that they are obligatory to a certain genre and one author or creator can’t exclude others from using them.

Where it gets tricky, especially for the Burn the Witch video, is that fictional characters, even if obligatory to a certain genre, can become copyrightable the more distinctly they are expressed. Think of famous literary characters like Sherlock Holmes or James Bond. An eccentric sleuth character or intrepid British spy can’t be copyrighted, as they are too broad to exclude others from employing them in separate creative works. But give the detective a hunting cap and pipe, or the spy a Walther PPK and martini—shaken, not stirred—and now you have characters with distinctive traits, worthy of copyright protection.

A significant case discussing the protectability of fictional characters involved Steven Spielberg’s iconic 1982 film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. After the film had become a major box-office hit and financial success, Universal sued a toy maker that was producing and selling dolls that closely resembled the titular alien character. Though the defendant toy company tried to claim that an alien character was not worthy of copyright protection, the court pointed to several distinct features of the E.T. character, which were also featured in the defendant’s doll.

The doll features the oddly shaped head, elongated neck, squat torso, long thin arms, and hunched-over posture of “E.T.”. The defendants’ doll has the distinctive shape and posture of “E.T.” as well as “E.T.”’s disproportionately large head, flat face, wide mouth, pug nose, knobby forehead, and large blue eyes.

A closer look at the Burn the Witch villagers reveals distinct and definite similarities to the inhabitants of Trumptonshire, validating the copyright claims of the Trumptonshire creators. For instance, the mayor of Trumptonshire is depicted as a mustachioed man wearing a tri-corned cap and medallion and is accompanied by a butler-like servant in jacket and tie. While the mayor in Burn the Witch sports a slightly different hat and long sideburns instead of a mustache, the similarities are undeniable.

(Trumptonshire pictured on the left, Burn the Witch on the right)
(Trumptonshire pictured on the left, Burn the Witch on the right)

It’s possible that defenders of the music video would argue that the work is a parody and immune from infringement claims under the fair use doctrine. But contrary to popular belief, not all parodies automatically trigger fair use, and in this case, the Burn the Witch video would not qualify as a parody.

According to the Supreme Court, a parody “is the use of some elements of a prior author’s composition to create a new one that, at least in part, comments on that author’s works.” But the Radiohead video isn’t commenting on Trumptonshire so much as using the Trumptonshire world and characters to comment on and criticize something else, which would classify it as a satire, not a parody. While satire may still be found to be non-infringing, the Supreme Court warns that satires are not as likely to merit a finding of fair use, especially when using a substantial amount of the original work.

Viewing the two works in succession, it’s difficult to deny a similar semblance. Even if Burn the Witch does not appropriate specific characters, the total concept and feel of the Radiohead video is substantially similar to Trumptonshire. A total concept and feel test refers to a subjective assessment of one work considered alongside another and whether both an expert and ordinary person would find them substantially similar.

In 1977, Sid & Marty Krofft Television Productions Inc. v. McDonald’s Corp. set the standard for total concept and feel by introducing a two-part extrinsic and intrinsic test for determining substantial similarity. The case involved a copyright infringement claim by a team of puppeteers and television producers against McDonald’s for their “McDonaldland” advertisements. The 9th Circuit evaluated similarity extrinsically by employing an expert to determine certain parallels between the two works.

Such criteria include the type of artwork involved, the materials used, the subject matter, and the setting for the subject. Since it is an extrinsic test, analytic dissection and expert testimony are appropriate. Moreover, this question may often be decided as a matter of law.

The intrinsic test relies on the response of an “ordinary reasonable person” to determine whether there were similarities in the expression of the works, a test that could be completed by a jury. In the Krofft case, the court found that both tests satisfied the similarity analysis, even with the defendants offering a list of differences between the two.

Using the two-part test established by Krofft, the Radiohead video would likely be found substantially similar to Trumptonshire and therefore infringing. Burn the Witch uses the same claymation-style stop-motion animation and features similar characters and settings as Trumptonshire, all factors that weigh in favor of extrinsic substantial similarity. And while the intrinsic test is subjective and may vary from one ordinary reasonable person to the next, it’s not hard to imagine a jury finding the two works substantially similar.

Radiohead has always been on the cutting edge of music technology, and front-man Thom Yorke has been an outspoken critic of a music industry that fails to protect the property rights of artists as their music is routinely stolen on sites like YouTube and the Pirate Bay. And so it’s surprising that they would not ensure that their collaborators had secured permission to use the Trumptonshire characters, given the similarities between the two works. Although the United Kingdom has similar exceptions to copyright law—known as fair dealing—as the United States, the laws are narrower and would likely favor the Trumptonshire creators if a copyright infringement suit is brought. As highly influential band that champions artists’ rights, Radiohead should take better care to practice what they preach.

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Administrative Agency Copyright Innovation Internet Legislation Uncategorized

FCC’s Extreme Proposal Threatens the Livelihood of Creators

By Matthew Barblan & Kevin Madigan

circuit board

Earlier this year, the FCC proposed a new regulatory scheme ostensibly designed to improve the market for pay-TV set-top boxes. Chairman Wheeler claimed that the proposed rules would “tear down the barriers that currently prevent innovators from developing new ways for consumers to access and enjoy their favorite shows and movies on their terms.” But set-top boxes are already on their way out as more and more consumers turn to streaming apps to watch their favorite movies and shows. So what is the FCC up to here? A close look at the proposed rules reveals that this isn’t about set-top boxes at all. Instead, the rules are designed to benefit a handful of companies that want to disseminate pay-TV programs without negotiating with or paying a license to the owners of those programs, undermining the property rights of creators and copyright owners. The creative community is understandably up in arms.

As we explain in comments filed with the FCC, the proposed rules would require pay-TV providers to make copyrighted video content available to third-party companies that have no contractual relationship with either the pay-TV providers or the creators of the video programming. The Commission essentially aims to create a zero-rate compulsory license for these companies. But this zero-rate compulsory license would fundamentally disrupt copyright owners’ ability to pursue the wide variety of business models and licensing arrangements that enable our creative ecosystem to thrive.

A key component of copyright owners’ property interest is the ability to choose to whom they license their works and on what terms. Because their livelihoods depend on the success of their works, copyright owners are particularly well-positioned and incentivized to determine the best way to commercialize them. By conveying copyrighted works to third parties without the consent of copyright owners, the proposed rules trample on the property rights of copyright owners and risk severely damaging our vibrant creative economy.

Adding insult to injury, the proposed rules wouldn’t even require the recipients of this zero-rate compulsory license to abide by the underlying contractual terms between copyright owners and pay-TV providers. Licensing contracts between copyright owners and pay-TV providers often include specific terms detailing the obligations of the provider in distributing the creative works. These terms can include things like channel “neighborhood” assignments, branding requirements, advertising limits, platform restrictions, and the list goes on. While the Commission states that “our goal is to preserve the contractual arrangements” between copyright owners and pay-TV providers, the proposed rules would transfer some, but not all, of the underlying contractual obligations to the third-party recipients of the copyrighted works.

For example, under the Commission’s proposal, third-party recipients of the copyrighted works would not be required to abide by contractual terms about channel placement designed to protect viewer experience and brand value. Similarly, the Commission’s proposal would not require third-party recipients of copyrighted works to abide by contractual terms concerning advertising in the delivery of those works. By allowing third parties to sidestep these terms, the Commission risks reducing the advertising revenue that pay-TV providers can earn from disseminating copyrighted works, thereby reducing the value of the license agreements that copyright owners negotiate with pay-TV providers.

In another thumb-in-the-eye to creators and copyright owners, the Commission’s proposal fails to account for copyright owners who may want to protect their copyrighted works by disseminating them exclusively through proprietary (and not widely licensable) content protection mechanisms. Instead, the Commission proposes to require pay-TV providers “to support at least one content protection system to protect its multichannel video programming that is licensable on reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms by an organization that is not affiliated with [the pay-TV provider].” Thus, the Commission would force copyright owners to risk exposing their property to security threats that may be associated with using widely-licensable content protection mechanisms.

Furthermore, nothing in the Commission’s proposal would prevent third parties from delivering the copyrighted works side-by-side with stolen versions of those same works. It is easy to imagine a search function that aggregates copies of creative works from a variety of platforms and displays the search results side-by-side. In fact, anyone who has run an internet search for a movie or TV show has likely seen results that mix links to both legitimate and stolen works.

Copyright owners’ ability to protect their creative works is essential both to preserve the value of their property and to give them the confidence to enter into arrangements with intermediaries (like pay-TV providers) to disseminate their works to a wide variety of audiences. This is especially true in light of the unique security challenges involved in portable, online, and short-term access to copyrighted works. Any reasonable proposal in this space would help copyright owners move forward in the ongoing battle to prevent the rampant theft and illegal dissemination of their works that has accompanied the rise of the internet. Unfortunately, the Commission’s proposal does just the opposite, limiting copyright owners’ ability to protect their property and pushing them backwards in the ongoing struggle against piracy.

Furthermore, it is entirely unclear where the Commission would draw the legal authority to change the nature of copyright owners’ property rights. The proposed rules simply claim that Section 629 of the Communications Act grants the Commission authority to implement the regulations in order to ensure competition and consumer choice in the navigation device market. In its justification of authority, the Commission repeatedly states that it will broadly interpret ambiguous terms in the Communications Act and that “a broad interpretation is necessary.” But nowhere in its analysis does the Commission cite to language granting it the authority to rewrite copyright law. Even under the broadest of interpretations, it is clear that the Communications Act does not give the Commission the authority to amend the Copyright Act and create a zero-royalty compulsory license out of thin air.

By granting artists and creators property rights in the fruits of their labors, copyright supports a diverse and multifaceted ecosystem that enables the development, distribution, and enjoyment of creative works, and that provides significant economic and cultural benefits to our society. But this ecosystem only works if copyright owners are able to safely and freely deploy their property in the marketplace. Unfortunately, the Commission’s proposal fails to respect the property rights of creators and copyright owners, risking severe disruption to the very same creative marketplace the Commission claims to promote.

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Antitrust Copyright International Law Internet Uncategorized

Google Image Search and the Misappropriation of Copyrighted Images

Cross-posted from the Mister Copyright blog.

Last week, American visual communications and stock photography agency Getty Images filed a formal complaint in support of the European Union’s investigation into Google’s anti-competitive business practices. The Getty complaint accuses Google of using its image search function to appropriate or “scrape” third-party copyrighted works, thereby drawing users away from the original source of the creative works and preserving its search engine dominance.

Specifically, Getty’s complaint focuses on changes made to Google’s image search functionality in 2013 that led to the appealing image galleries we’re familiar with today. Before the change, users were presented with low-resolution thumbnail versions of images and would be rerouted to the original source website to view a larger, more defined version and to find out how they might legally license or get permission to use the work. But with the current Google Image presentation, users are instantly delivered a large, desirable image and have no need to access the legitimate source. As Getty says in its complaint, “[b]ecause image consumption is immediate, once an image is displayed in high-resolution, large format, there is little impetus to view the image on the original source site.”

According to a study by Define Media Group, in the first year after the changes to Google Image search, image search referrals to original source websites were reduced by up to 80%. The report also provides before and after screenshots of a Google Image search and points out that before 2013, when a thumbnail was clicked, the source site appeared in the background. Not only does the source site not appear in the new version, but an extra click is required to get to the site, adding to the overall disconnect with the original content. Despite Google’s claims to the contrary, the authors of the study conclude that the new image search service is designed to keep users on the Google website.

It’s difficult not to consider Google’s image UI [user interface] change a shameless content grab – one which blatantly hijacks material that has been legitimately licensed by publishers so that Google Image users remain on their site, and are de-incentivized from visiting others.

While Getty’s complaint against Google is based on anticompetitive concerns, it involves the underlying contention that Google Image search enables misappropriation of copyrighted images on a massive scale. Anyone who has run a Google Image search knows that with the click of a mouse, a user is presented with hundreds of images related to their query, and with another simple right click, that user can then copy and paste these images as they please. But Google Image search often returns an abundance of copyright protected images, enabling anyone to copy, display and disseminate images without considering the underlying copyright and existing licenses. And while using the service may be free, make no mistake that Google is monetizing it through advertisements and the mining of users’ personal data.

When users are able to access and copy these full-screen, high resolution images from Google Image search, not only do third-party image providers lose traffic to their website, but the photographers and creators behind the images lose potential income, attribution and exposure that would come with users accessing the original source. As General Counsel Yoko Miyashita explains, “Getty Images represents over 200,000 photojournalists, content creators and artists around the world who rely on us to protect their ability to be compensated for their work.” When Google Image search obviates the need for a user to access the original creative content, these artists and creators are being denied a fair marketplace for their images, and their ability and motivation to create future works is jeopardized.

Shortly after Google changed to the new image search, individual photo publishers and image creators took to a Google Forum to voice their concerns over the effects the service was having on their images and personal web pages. A recurring complaint was that the service made it more difficult to find out information about images and that users now had to go through more steps to reach the original source website. One commenter, identifying herself as a “small time photo publisher,” described Google’s new practice of hotlinking to high-resolution images as a “skim engine” rather than a “search engine.” She lamented that not only was Google giving people access to her content without visiting her site, but her bandwidth usage (i.e. expense) went up due to the hotlinking of her high resolution images.

Google Image supporters argue that creators and image providers should simply use hotlink protection to block Google from displaying their content, but Google’s search engine dominance is so absolute, this would further curtail traffic to the original source of the content. Others suggest image providers stamp their images with watermarks to protect from infringement, but Getty VP Jonathan Lockwood explains that doing so would result in punishment from Google.

They penalise people who try to protect their content. There is then a ‘mismatch penalty’ for the site: you have to show the same one to Google Images that you own. If you don’t, you disappear.

The internet has made sharing creative works and gaining exposure as an artist easier than anyone could have imagined before the digital age, but it has also brought challenges in the form of protecting and controlling creative content. These challenges are particularly burdensome for image creators and providers, whose creative works are subject to unauthorized use the moment they are put online. Over the last few years, Google Image search has contributed to this problem by transforming from a service that provided direction to creative works to a complete substitute for original, licensed content.

With fewer opportunities for image providers and creators to realize a return–whether it be in the form of payment, attribution, or exposure–from their works, creativity and investment in creators will be stifled. Artists and rightsholders deserve fair compensation and credit for their works, and technology needs to work with image providers rather than against them to ensure that great content continues to be created.

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Copyright Internet Legislation Uncategorized

Copyright Policy Should Be Based On Facts, Not Rhetoric

Here’s a brief excerpt of a post by Kevin Madigan & Devlin Hartline that was published on IPWatchdog.

After nearly twenty years with the DMCA, the Copyright Office has launched a new study to examine the impact and effectiveness of this system, and voices on both sides of the debate have filed comments expressing their views. For the most part, frustrated copyright owners report that the DMCA has not successfully stemmed the tide of online infringement, which is completely unsurprising to anyone who spends a few minutes online searching for copyrighted works. Unfortunately, some commentators are also pushing for changes that that would make things even more difficult for copyright owners.

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

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Copyright Internet Legislation Uncategorized

Separating Fact from Fiction in the Notice and Takedown Debate

By Kevin Madigan & Devlin Hartline

U.S. Capitol buidlingWith the Copyright Office undertaking a new study to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of the Section 512 safe harbor provisions, there’s been much discussion about how well the DMCA’s notice and takedown system is working for copyright owners, service providers, and users. While hearing from a variety of viewpoints can help foster a healthy discussion, it’s important to separate rigorous research efforts from overblown reports that offer incomplete data in support of dubious policy recommendations.

Falling into the latter category is Notice and Takedown in Everyday Practice, a recently-released study claiming to take an in-depth look at how well the notice and takedown system operates after nearly twenty years in practice. The study has garnered numerous headlines that repeat its conclusion that nearly 30% of all takedown requests are “questionable” and that echo its suggestions for statutory reforms that invariably disfavor copyright owners. But what the headlines don’t mention is that the study presents only a narrow and misleading assessment of the notice and takedown process that overstates its findings and fails to adequately support its broad policy recommendations.

Presumably released to coincide with the deadline for submitting comments to the Copyright Office on the state of Section 512, the authors claim to have produced “the broadest empirical analysis of the DMCA notice and takedown” system to date. They make bold pronouncements about how “the notice and takedown system . . . meets the goals it was intended to address” and “continues to provide an efficient method of enforcement in many circumstances.” But the goals identified by the authors are heavily skewed towards service providers and users at the expense of copyright owners, and the authors include no empirical analysis of whether the notice and takedown system is actually effective at combating widespread piracy.

The study reads more like propaganda than robust empiricism. It should be taken for what it is: A policy piece masquerading as an independent study. The authors’ narrow focus on one sliver of the notice and takedown process, with no analysis of the systemic results, leads to conclusions and recommendations that completely ignore the central issue of whether Section 512 fosters an online environment that adequately protects the rights of copyright owners. The authors conveniently ignore this part of the DMCA calculus and instead put forth a series of proposals that would systematically make it harder for copyright owners to protect their property rights.

To its credit, the study acknowledges many of its own limitations. For example, the authors recognize that the “dominance of Google notices in our dataset limits our ability to draw broader conclusions about the notice ecosystem.” Indeed, over 99.992% of the individual requests in the dataset for the takedown study were directed at Google, with 99.8% of that dataset directed at Google Search in particular. Of course, search engines do not include user-generated content—the links Google provides are links that Google itself collects and publishes. There are no third parties to alert about the takedowns since Google is taking down its own content. Likewise, removing links from Google Search does not actually remove the linked-to content from the internet.

The authors correctly admit that “the characteristics of these notices cannot be extrapolated to the entire world of notice sending.” A more thorough quantitative study would include data on sites that host user-generated content, like YouTube and Facebook. As it stands, the study gives us some interesting data on one search engine, but even that data is limited to a sample size of 1,826 requests out of 108 million over a six-month period in mid-2013. And it’s not even clear how these samples were randomized since the authors admittedly created “tranches” to ensure the notices collected were “of great substantive interest,” but they provide no details about how they created these tranches.

Despite explicitly acknowledging that the study’s data is not generalizable, the authors nonetheless rely on it to make numerous policy suggestions that would affect the entire notice and takedown system and that would tilt the deck further in favor of infringement and against copyright owners. They even identify some of their suggestions as explicitly reflecting “Public Knowledge’s suggestion,” which is a far cry from a reasoned academic approach. The authors do note that “any changes should take into account the interests of . . . small- and medium-sized copyright holders,” but this is mere lip service. Their proposals would hurt copyright owners of all shapes and sizes.

The authors justify their policy proposals by pointing to the “mistaken and abusive takedown demands” that they allegedly uncover in the study. These so-called “questionable” notices are the supposed proof that the entire notice and takedown system needs fixing. A closer look at these “questionable” notices shows that they’re not nearly so questionable. The authors claim that 4.2% of the notices surveyed (about 77 notices) are “fundamentally flawed because they targeted content that clearly did not match the identified infringed work.” This figure includes obvious mismatches, where the titles aren’t even the same. But it also includes ambiguous notices, such as where the underlying work does not match the title or where the underlying page changes over time.

The bulk of the so-called “questionable” notices comes from those notices that raise “questions about compliance with the statutory requirements” (15.4%, about 281 notices) or raise “potential fair use defenses” (7.3%, about 133 notices). As to the statutory requirements issue, the authors argue that these notices make it difficult for Google to locate the material to take down. This claim is severely undercut by the fact that, as they acknowledge in a footnote, Google complies with 97.5% of takedown notices overall. Moreover, it wades into the murky waters of whether copyright owners can send service providers a “representative list” of infringing works. Turning to the complaint about potential fair uses, the authors argue that copyright owners are not adequately considering “mashups, remixes, or covers.” But none of these uses are inherently fair, and there’s no reason to think that the notices were sent in bad faith just because someone might be able to make a fair use argument.

The authors claim that their “recommendations for statutory reforms are relatively modest,” but that supposed modesty is absent from their broad list of suggestions. Of course, everything they suggest increases the burdens and liabilities of copyright owners while lowering the burdens and liabilities of users, service providers, and infringers. Having overplayed the data on “questionable” notices, the authors reveal their true biases. And it’s important to keep in mind that they make these broad suggestions that would affect everyone in the notice and takedown system after explicitly acknowledging that their data “cannot be extrapolated to the entire world of notice sending.” Indeed, the study contains no empirical data on sites that host user-generated content, so there’s nothing whatsoever to support any changes for such sites.

The study concludes that the increased use of automated systems to identify infringing works online has resulted in the need for better mechanisms to verify the accuracy of takedown requests, including human review. But the data is limited to small surveys with secret questions and a tiny fraction of notices sent to one search engine. The authors offer no analysis of the potential costs of implementing their recommendations, nor do they consider how it might affect the ability of copyright owners to police piracy. Furthermore, data presented later in the study suggests that increased human review might have little effect on the accuracy of takedown notices. Not only do the authors fail to address the larger problem of whether the DMCA adequately addresses online piracy, their suggestions aren’t even likely to address the narrower problem of inaccurate notices that they want to fix.

Worse still, the study almost completely discards the ability of users to contest mistaken or abusive notices by filing counternotices. This is the solution that’s already built into the DMCA, yet the authors inexplicably dismiss it as ineffective and unused. Apart from providing limited answers from a few unidentified survey respondents, the authors offer no data on the frequency or effectiveness of counternotices. The study repeatedly criticizes the counternotice system as failing to offer “due process protection” to users, but that belief is grounded in the notion that a user that fails to send a counternotice has somehow been denied the chance. Moreover, it implies a constitutional right that is not at issue when two parties interact in the absence of government action. The same holds true for the authors’ repeated—and mistaken—invocation of “freedom of expression.”

More fundamentally, the study ignores the fact that the counternotice system is stacked against copyright owners. A user can simply file a counternotice and have the content in question reposted, and most service providers are willing to repost the content following a counternotice because they’re no longer on the hook should the content turn out to be infringing. The copyright owner, by contrast, then faces the choice of allowing the infringement to continue or filing an expensive lawsuit in federal court. The study makes it sound like users are rendered helpless because counternotices are too onerous, but the reality is that the system leaves copyright owners practically powerless to combat bad faith counternotices.

Pretty much everyone agrees that the notice and takedown system needs a tune up. The amount of infringing content available online today is immense. This rampant piracy has resulted in an incredible number of takedown notices being sent to service providers by copyright owners each day. Undoubtedly, the notice and takedown system should be updated to address these realities. And to the extent that some are abusing the system, they should be held accountable. But in considering changes to the entire system, we should not be persuaded by biased studies based on limited (and secret) datasets that provide little to no support for their ultimate conclusions and recommendations. While it may make for evocative headlines, it doesn’t make for good policy.

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Copyright Internet Legislation Uncategorized

Middle Class Artists Want a DMCA System That Works

The following guest post comes from Rebecca Cusey, a second year law student at George Mason University School of Law.

By Rebecca Cusey

Rebecca_Cusey_HeadshotMason Law’s Arts & Entertainment Advocacy Clinic filed comments today with the U.S. Copyright Office detailing the frustrations and futilities experienced by everyday artists as they struggle with the DMCA system to protect their copyrights online.

Terrica Carrington and I wrote the comments on behalf of middle class artists, that group of creative professionals who invests in and lives off their art and yet does not have the kind of revenue stream or corporate backing of more well-known artists. These photographers, filmmakers, musicians, and other artists are squeezed between infringement that directly affects their ability to pay for things like a mortgage or orthodontics bill and the exorbitant cost of using the notice and takedown system to fight infringement.

Terrica and I spoke with four artists: Filmmaker Ellen Seidler, news photographer Yunghi Kim, musician Blake Morgan, audiovisual creator David Newhoff. These artists make works of value and have followings, and thus infringement. They make a profession of their art.

A middle class artist must do it all on her own – find infringement by hours of searching the web, compile lists of infringing posts on each site, navigate each site’s confusing DMCA notification system, and send takedown notification after takedown notification. And that’s all just sending the notifications. Monitoring to see if the infringing content has been removed or if it has simply been uploaded in another spot is a whole other job in itself.

The artists with whom we talked said it was not unusual in the least for a song, photograph, or film to be posted illegally in a thousand places, even tens of thousands of places. Finding infringement and sending notices took hundreds and thousands of hours, hours they could have spent taking photographs, making movies, or writing songs.

After all the time spent fighting infringement online, they felt the task was futile because the content simply reappeared, sometimes in a different place on the same site, other times because of counternotices filed with the ISP hosting the content claiming to have the right to post it.

These artists felt the notice and takedown system mandated by Section 512 of the Copyright Act was both all-consuming and futile, all-consuming because it ate hours upon hours and futile because it yielded little to no results. Ultimately, all of them decided to stop spending time trying to enforce their copyrights under the procedures of Section 512. It simply was not worth it.

Our comments were filed in response to a request by the U.S. Copyright Office for comments on the effectiveness of Section 512 in fighting infringement online. The Copyright Office wanted to know in particular if the provisions of Section 512 balanced the needs of ISPs to host content with the needs of copyright owners to control their work.

Middle class artists feel the balance is off and the scale tipped in favor of ISPs. These artists do not object to bearing some responsibility for protecting their copyrights online. They simply want a system that works.

To read our Section 512 comments, please click here.

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Copyright Internet Legislation Uncategorized

Copyright Scholars: Courts Have Disrupted the DMCA’s Careful Balance of Interests

Washington, D.C. at nightThe U.S. Copyright Office is conducting a study of the safe harbors under Section 512 of the DMCA, and comments are due today. Working with Victor Morales and Danielle Ely from Mason Law’s Arts & Entertainment Advocacy Clinic, we drafted and submitted comments on behalf of several copyright law scholars. In our Section 512 comments, we look at one narrow issue that we believe is the primary reason the DMCA is not working as it should: the courts’ failure to properly apply the red flag knowledge standard. We argue that judicial interpretations of red flag knowledge have disrupted the careful balance of responsibilities Congress intended between copyright owners and service providers. Instead of requiring service providers to take action in the face of red flags, courts have allowed them to turn a blind eye and bury their heads in the sand.

Whether Section 512’s safe harbors are working as intended is a hotly contested issue. On the one hand, hundreds of artists and songwriters are calling for changes “to the antiquated DMCA which forces creators to police the entire internet for instances of theft, placing an undue burden on these artists and unfairly favoring technology companies and rogue pirate sites.” On the other hand, groups like the Internet Association, which includes tech giants such as Google and Facebook, claim that the safe harbors are “working effectively” since they “strike a balance between facilitating free speech and creativity while protecting the interests of copyright holders.” The Internet Association even claims that “the increasing number of notice and takedown requests” shows that the DMCA working.

Of course, it’s utter nonsense to suggest that the more takedown notices sent and processed, the more we know the DMCA is working. The point of the safe harbors, according to the Senate Report on the DMCA, is “to make digital networks safe places to disseminate and exploit copyrighted materials.” The proper metric of success is not the number of takedown notices sent; it’s whether the internet is a safe place for copyright owners to disseminate and exploit their works. The continuing availability of huge amounts of pirated works should tip us off that the safe harbors are not working as intended. If anything, the increasing need for takedown notices suggests that things are getting worse for copyright owners, not better. If the internet were becoming a safer place, the number of takedown notices should be decreasing. It’s not surprising that service providers enjoy the status quo, given that the burden of tracking down and identifying infringement doesn’t fall on them, but this is not the balance that Congress intended to strike.

Our comments to the Copyright Office run through the relevant legislative history to show what Congress really had in mind—and it wasn’t copyright owners doing all of the work in locating and identifying infringement online. Instead, as noted in the Senate Report, Congress sought to “preserve[] strong incentives for service providers and copyright owners to cooperate to detect and deal with copyright infringements that take place in the digital networked environment.” The red flag knowledge standard was a key leverage point to encourage service providers to participate in the effort to detect and eliminate infringement. Unfortunately, courts thus far have interpreted the standard so narrowly that, beyond acting on takedown notices, service providers have little incentive to work together with copyright owners to prevent piracy. Even in cases with the most crimson of flags, courts have failed to strip service providers of their safe harbor protection. Perversely, the current case law incentivizes service providers to actively avoid doing anything when they see red flags, lest they gain actual knowledge of infringement and jeopardize their safe harbors. This is exactly the opposite of what Congress intended.

The Second and Ninth Circuits have interpreted the red flag knowledge standard to require knowledge of specific infringing material before service providers can lose their safe harbors. While tech giants might think this is great, it’s terrible for authors and artists who need service providers to carry their share of the load in combating online piracy. Creators are left in a miserable position where they bear the entire burden of policing infringement across an immense range of services, effectively making it impossible to prevent the deluge of piracy of their works. The Second and Ninth Circuits believe red flag knowledge should require specificity because otherwise service providers wouldn’t know exactly what material to remove when faced with a red flag. We argue that Congress intended service providers with red flag knowledge of infringing activity in general to then bear the burden of locating and removing the specific infringing material. This is the balance of responsibilities that Congress had in mind when it crafted the red flag knowledge standard and differentiated it from the actual knowledge standard.

But all hope is not lost. The Second and Ninth Circuits are but two appellate courts, and there are many others that have yet to rule on the red flag knowledge issue. Moreover, the Supreme Court has never interpreted the safe harbors of the DMCA. We hope that our comments will help expose the underlying problem that hurts so many creators today who are stuck playing the DMCA’s whack-a-mole game when their very livelihoods are at stake. Congress intended the DMCA to be the cornerstone of a shared-responsibility approach to fighting online piracy. Unfortunately, it has become a shield that allows service providers to enable piracy on a massive scale without making any efforts to prevent it beyond acting on takedown notices. The fact that search engines can still index The Pirate Bay—an emblematic piracy site that even has the word “pirate” in its name—without concern of losing their safe harbor protection is a testament to how the courts have turned Congress’ intent on its head. We hope that the Copyright Office’s study will shed light on this important issue.

To read our Section 512 comments, please click here.