2011 was the year US copyright law was put to the test confronting whether cyberlockers and social media sites are liable for infringements contributed to by these sites. Some sites, like myVidster (see here also) Megaupload, Hotfile, and MP3tunes suffered set backs or losses in the US courts. Others, like Visible Technologies the operator of the myxer.com social radio website and most recently Veoh Networks were more successful, at least so far.
Posts Tagged ‘dmca’
Cyberlockers, social media sites and copyright liability
January 9th, 2012Ninth Circuit sides with Veoh in UMG v Veoh appeal
December 21st, 2011The Ninth Circuit released its decision in the UMG Recordings v Veoh Networks case yesterday. In affirming the decision of the District Court, the Ninth Circuit made three important rulings with respect to the scope of the DMCA hosting safe harbor:
- The safe harbor can cover use by service providers of an automated process for transcoding and making files accessible.
- Merely hosting copyrightable content with the general knowledge that one’s services could be used to share infringing material, is insufficient to meet the DMCA knowledge requirements that can lead to a loss of immunity if steps are not taken to takedown or disable access to infringing content.
Some observations on Bill C-11: The Copyright Modernization Act
October 3rd, 2011Last Thursday the Government of Canada introduced into the House of Commons Bill C-11, an Act to Amend the Copyright Act. In a press release describing the Bill, Heritage Minister James Moore and Industry Minister Christian Paradis, stated that the Bill will ensure that Canada’s copyright laws “are modern, flexible, and in line with current international standards” and will “protect and help create jobs, promote innovation, and attract new investment to Canada.”
Are the TPM provisions in C-32 more restrictive than those in the DMCA?
September 30th, 2010The US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has revised its opinion in the MGE UPS Systems Inc. v. GE Consumer and Industrial Inc. 2010 WL 3769210 (5th.Cir. Sept. 29, 2010) case withdrawing entirely the discussion of whether a copyright violation is a prerequisite for a violation of DMCA Section 1201(a). Instead, it affirmed the dismissal of the DMCA claim solely on the lack of proof that any GE/PMI employee actually circumvented the access control TPM and because the DMCA TPM prohibitions do not apply to “using the software after some other party disabled the code requiring a” TPM.
MGE v GE-what did the 5th Circuit decide about the scope of the DMCA TPM provisions and was it right?
July 29th, 2010Last week, the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit released a controversial decision interpreting Section 1201(a) of the DMCA in MGE UPS Inc v GE Consumer and Industrial, Inc. 2010 WL 2820006 (5th Cir.2010). Prof. Geist has suggested that the case decided that the “DMCA is limited to guarding access controls only to the extent that circumvention would violate the copyright rights of the copyright owner.” His summary of the case is neither accurate nor complete. Here’s why.
The MGE case
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