[Infowarrior] - Another Court Rejects Idea That DMCA Requires Proactive Approach From Service Providers

[Richard Forno]

Another Court Rejects Idea That DMCA Requires Proactive Approach From Service Providers

from the sorry-viacom dept

The very crux of the ongoing Viacom/YouTube lawsuit is whether or not the DMCA requires that a service provider, such as YouTube, proactively police the content on the site, perhaps via a filter tool. The lower court rejected that claim, saying that the DMCA is pretty clear that the service provider needs specific notice of infringing works (via takedown notices, for example). The entertainment industry and its supporters continue to argue that there is a mythological obligation of service providers to police their own site once they have general knowledge that there's some infringing works. Now we have yet another court ruling (and it's not the first) to completely reject this claim. 

The lawsuit involves an artist who discovered some allegedly infringing copies of her work were available via the photo hosting site Photobucket. She sent some takedown notices, and then decided that she'd sent enough takedown notices, so Photobucket should be "on notice" about her works being infringed, and she expected the company to proactively police her works and keep them off the site. As Eric Goldman notes, the court made quick work of this argument, in explaining how it's simply wrong...

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http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110325/04173913626/another-court-rejects-idea-that-dmca-requires-proactive-approach-service-providers.shtml