By Marc J. Randazza
YNOT – Perfect 10 is at it again — this time continuing to press the argument that its Digital Millennium Copyright Act notices may not be reproduced (source). This is a misguided use of copyright law.
The DMCA addresses a number of copyright concerns affecting online businesses and other websites, immunizing site operators from copyright infringement perpetrated by end-users. To take advantage of this protection, though, a site must register a designated agent with the U.S. Copyright Office. The agent will appear in the Copyright Office’s official registry and may be contacted with a takedown notice once infringing content is found so as to facilitate its removal. Offering further protection to content producers, the DMCA requires websites to terminate the accounts of users who repeatedly engage in copyright infringement.
Most copyright attorneys know that if they send a DMCA notice, it very well may wind up on ChillingEffects.org. If you send a DMCA notice to Google, it absolutely, positively, will end up there. Many of my own DMCA notices reside on the watchdog site, and I am neither uncomfortable with that fact nor mind my efforts being held up to scrutiny. If I am going to issue a DMCA notice demanding content be taken off the internet without any judicial review at all, my maneuvers should be at least subject to the prying eyes in the marketplace of ideas.
Perfect 10 shamefully disagrees. Copyright law technically protects all forms of original content, from letters and personal photographs to drawings on napkins and suicide notes. Perfect 10 protests its DMCA takedown notices’ full presence on Chilling Effects — and Google’s forwarding of them to the site — on the basis that these actions violate the copyright vested in those letters. This position reflects a certain copyright obsession that has possessed Perfect 10: In its view, not only is its content inviolably protected and above fair use exception to copyright law, but so too are its DMCA takedown notices.
Perfect 10 is wrong. Here’s why:
It is no secret that the film The People vs. Larry Flynt is one of my favorite movies of all time. Most of my readers are fully aware of the Supreme Court case depicted in the film. However, the lesser-known case, mentioned for all of 30 seconds in the film, is the Hustler v. Moral Majority countersuit.
In that case, Jerry Falwell took the “Jerry Falwell Talks About His First Time” Campari parody and sent it to his Moral Majority minions — soliciting donations. Falwell took the entire copyrighted work and used it for a blatantly commercial purpose.
[quote]One of Falwell’s top executives conceded that the inclusion of a copy of the ad parody was part of a “marketing approach” to fund-raising, and the court can safely assume that this strategy involved encouraging the faithful to donate money. Hustler v. Moral Majority, 606 F. Supp. 1526, 1534 (C.D. Calif. 1985).[/quote]
However, the court found Falwell was not using the ad to elicit support for purely commercial gain, but even if he was, this did not dissolve the fair use defense.
[quote][T]he court must also consider whether “the alleged infringers copied the material to use it for the same intrinsic purpose for which the copyright owner intended it to be used.” Marcus, 695 F.2d at 1175; Jartech, Inc. v. Clancy, 666 F.2d 403, 407 (9th Cir.), cert. denied 459 U.S. 879, 74 L. Ed. 2d 143, 103 S. Ct. 175 (1982) (same); see Italian Book Corp. v. American Broadcasting Companies, 458 F. Supp. 65, 70 (S.D.N.Y. 1978 ) (fair use generally sustained if defendant’s use not in competition with the copyrighted use). Under this principle, defendant’s use is more likely to be considered fair if it serves a different function than plaintiff’s.
…
In distributing the parody, Falwell evidently meant to provoke the anger of his followers and to comment on the level of obscenity in the work.[/quote]
The Central District of California also pointed out portions of the Copyright Act’s legislative history, which seem to take aim at Perfect 10′s position.
[quote]The court discerns additional support for Falwell’s position in the legislative history to section 107. The House Report states: “When a copyrighted work contains unfair, inaccurate, or derogatory information concerning an individual or institution, the individual or institution may copy and re-produce such parts of the work as are necessary to permit understandable comment on the state-ments made in the work.” House Report, supra, at 73. It would thus be consistent with congressional intent to find that Falwell was entitled to provide his followers with copies of the parody in order effectively give his views of the derogatory statements it contained.[/quote]
Accordingly, if you send a DMCA notice to someone else, claiming there is illegal content on their site, they should be able to use that letter for many purposes — including comment on the DMCA notice itself.
Strictly speaking, copyright law may cover DMCA notices, but this type of fair use seems to be required under the First Amendment.
[quote]First amendment considerations also enter into the court’s assessment of the purpose and character of defendants’ use. Although the first amendment does not provide a defense to copyright infringement, when an act of copying occurs in the course of a political, social or moral debate, the public interest in free expression is one factor favoring a finding of fair use. See Keep Thomson Governor Committee v. Citizens for Gallen Committee, 457 F. Supp. 957, 959-60 (D.N.H. 1978 ) (political committee’s use of a portion of rival candidate’s musical composition amounted to fair use in light of public interest in full debate over election and absence of injury to plaintiff). Cf. Robert Stigwood Group Limited v. O’Reilly, 346 F. Supp. 376, 383-84 (D. Conn. 1972), (priests’ un-authorized copying of rock opera, “Jesus Christ Superstar,” was not fair use where facts did not support defendants’ contention that their performance was counterattack to original’s “perverted” version of the Gospel), rev’d on other grounds, 530 F.2d 1096 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 848, 50 L. Ed. 2d 121, 97 S. Ct. 135 (1976).[/quote]
Similarly, anyone who receives a cease-and-desist letter certainly could claim there is a debate at hand. Without the debate, there would be no complained-of statements or actions. It does not take Justice Brennan to see the First Amendment protection inherent in the re-publication of a demand letter in this context.
[quote]The purpose of copyright is to create incentives for creative effort. Even copying for noncommercial purposes may impair the copyright holder’s ability to obtain the rewards that Congress intended him to have. But a use that has no demonstrable effect upon the potential market for, or the value of, the copyrighted work need not be prohibited in order to protect the author’s incentive to create. The prohibition of such non-commercial uses would merely inhibit access to ideas without any countervailing benefit. Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios, 104 S. Ct. 774, 793 (1984).[/quote]
Under the “harm to the market for the original” prong of fair use, if the defendant’s use would tend to diminish sales of the plaintiffs work, then the factor can count against the defendant. However, that only applies if it would supplant the marketplace for the original. For example, if I copied a Perfect 10 DMCA notice and used it as my own, then I might be committing copyright infringement. On the other hand, if I use Perfect 10′s DMCA notice as part of a critique of Perfect 10, or of the DMCA in general, or as part of a study on the DMCA, then that that is a valuable addition to the marketplace of ideas — and it is protected speech.
Let us return to Hustler v. Falwell:
[quote]The court has carefully considered all the evidence placed before it in light of the factors set out in section 107. It concludes that the “‘equitable rule of reason ‘ balance,” Sony Corp., 104 S. Ct. at 795, tilts sharply in favor of a finding of fair use. Any other result would mean applying the copyright laws in an inflexible manner and ignoring fundamental considerations of fairness. The ad parody was a satire about Falwell. He was entitled to use it as he did.[/quote]
Exactly. A cease-and-desist or a DMCA notice is an instrument of attack upon the recipient. Any court that would find that this is copyright infringement should be reversed or impeached.
Okay counselor, but do you have a case that is exactly on point?
As a matter of fact, I do.
In Online Policy Group v. Diebold, the Northern District of California held “fair use is not an infringement of copyright.” The court also held that copying of the copyrighted materials (Diebold email archives) was so clearly fair use that “[n]o reasonable copyright holder could have believed that [they] were protected by copyright.” The court in that case held that the DMCA notice and takedown was defective and that the sender was liable for material misrepresentation.
Conclusion
In short, if you issue a DMCA notice, you should not expect that it will remain confidential, nor should you expect that it won’t wind up on ChillingEffects.org. If you are the author of a DMCA notice, don’t write anything you don’t want the entire world to see.
Marc J. Randazza is the founding partner of the Randazza Legal Group, a law practice specializing in First Amendment issues, copyright and trademark protection, defamation, domain-name disputes and employment matters. The firm maintains offices in California, Florida, Nevada and Ontario.
