Last November, we wrote about the Copyright Office’s decision to ditch its paper registration system for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) safe harbor and start a new online system completely from scratch. If you have had other things on your mind since November 2016, we completely understand. However, if you run a website that hosts user content, copyright law will not understand (and you will lose DMCA safe harbor protection) unless you re-register under the new system before the end of December 2017. … More
Tag Archives: Safe Harbor
Corporate Defendants Find a Safe Harbor from Unfair Competition Claims in California Transparency Litigation
A District Court judge in California has dismissed a complaint against Nestlé USA Inc. and Nestlé Purina Petcare Co. (together “Nestlé”) which argued that the company was obligated to inform consumers that seafood in its catfood products may have been sourced from forced labor. Plaintiffs alleged violations of the California Unfair Competition Law, the Legal Remedies Act, and the California False Advertising Law.
Specifically,… More
The Case of the Missing Designated Agent: Omitting Subsidiaries From Your DMCA Filing May Be Costly
Many of our fine readers are by now well acquainted with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the late-‘90s era addition to the Copyright Act intended to address an increasingly digital copyright landscape. The DMCA includes treaty compliance updates, anti-circumvention provisions and, most important for present purposes, the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA), 17 U.S.C. § 512,… More
Imagine There’s No Safe Harbor: Does the DMCA Apply to pre-1972 Sound Recordings?
Vimeo, the online video service, is seeking leave to appeal to the Second Circuit on the issue of whether sound recordings made prior to 1972 are covered by the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). As a practical matter, affirmance by the Second Circuit would mean that an otherwise DMCA-compliant internet service provider (ISP) could be immune from liability for copyright infringement if one of its user videos infringes John Lennon’s 1973 Mind Games,… More