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from the so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish? dept.
This piece of news over at Ars Technica may have some startling implications.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act's so-called "safe harbor" defense to infringement is under fire from a paparazzi photo agency. A new court ruling says the defense may not always be available to websites that host content submitted by third parties.
A Livejournal site hosted messages of celebrities, and a paparazzi agency that owns some of those photos took exception. Since the site moderated the posts that appeared, the appeals court ruled that just shouting "safe harbour" is insufficient - the court should investigate the extent to which the moderators curated the input.
As the MPAA wrote in an amicus brief:
If the record supports Mavrix’s allegations that LiveJournal solicited and actively curated posts for the purpose of adding, rather than removing, content that was owned by third parties in order to draw traffic to its site, LiveJournal would not be entitled to summary judgment on the basis of the safe harbor...
It's hard to argue with that: a site that actively solicits and then posts content owned by others seems to fall afoul of current copyright legislation in the USA.
But I can't help thinking of the impact this may have on SoylentNews.... if left to stand, this ruling could make running a site such as SN a very tricky line to walk.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday April 11 2017, @08:28PM (4 children)
No. But IANAL so take the following with a grain of salt.
Our comments are not reviewed and approved for posting by site moderators. We decide what to post and where to post it in the comments section. Afterwards, users can decide if they want to vote up/down the comment. Soylent comments are protected under safe harbor. If a user plagiarizes some content in a comment, soylent is protected by safe harbor so long as the offending content is removed.
Posted news articles are not protected because the user has no control over what is posted, the mods do. So if TMB posts a plagiarized article (unbeknownst to him) with no credit or links, then soylent can get in trouble if the content owner decides to take action.
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Tuesday April 11 2017, @08:38PM
So if TMB posts a plagiarized article (unbeknownst to him) with no credit or links
I actually read the first ten pages of the judicial opinion and a better analogy would be if TMB were a paid employee of a site self describing itself as specializing in distribution of copyright violations and he posted a story that even the dumbest non-technical normie could tell was a violation like microsoft-property-(c)-windows-10-(tm).torrent as a story, and SN ran a shitton of ads on that torrent article making a pile of cash, then MS asked for a share of the ad revenue and SN said F you see you in court, because TMB is a member of the general public so you as a copyright owner can kiss my shiny metal DMCA ass, then, and only then, would SN get in trouble. Otherwise we're mostly safe, I think.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday April 11 2017, @08:41PM (2 children)
The issue wasn't with LJ blog owners posting copyrighted content. It was users commenting with copyrighted content. The volunteer moderators removed the "offending content" after they were told but Mavrix is arguing that because they were volunteers who originally approved the comments then it removes Safe Harbor status from livejournal. The court is now trying to figure out how much influence moderators have in the process of promoting (copyrighted?) content.
Someone posts copyrighted material to SN. Moderators mod it up to get higher visibility. Copyright owner says take it down. SN admin takes it down. Copyright owner sues because it never should have been moderated up in the first place.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Tuesday April 11 2017, @09:16PM
The ruling deals with moderated postings: every post goes through a moderator; with only about 30% being approved. The moderators not only moderate for content, but posts are required to include images; rather than just linking to third-party sites.
The appeal court said that the lower court erred in dismissing the case with a summary judgement. It now goes back to the lower court for a re-hearing.
Source:LiveJournal ONTD loses Copyright Safe Harbor from content moderation? #wtfu (Leonard French) [youtube.com] (1h9min38seconds)
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday April 12 2017, @03:54PM
If we are talking about a comment then no because no moderator intervention is needed to approve the actual post. It is posted directly by the user. We can only vote it up/down to change it's score. We can't vote to delete a post or hide it permanently. Only the soylent crew has that ability.
Article submissions are an example where we the users have no control. We can only submit content and then it's up to the editors to check and post them. That is where the safe harbor act ends.