| Title | Moderation can Undo DMCA Safe Harbour, Appeals Court Rules | |
| Date | Tuesday April 11 2017, @07:41PM | |
| Author | martyb | |
| Topic | ||
| 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.
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printed from SoylentNews, Moderation can Undo DMCA Safe Harbour, Appeals Court Rules on 2023-05-26 11:22:09