Roblox Faces Potentially Unlimited Copyright Liability—Robinson v. Binello
This case involves the Maple Leaf Rag song, composed by Scott Joplin. Even if you aren’t a ragtime aficionado, you may have heard this tune. Joplin’s song is in the public domain now. The plaintiff Robinson made a recording of it (here is one such version) that is copyrighted.
The defendant Binello made a popular Roblox game called MeepCity—allegedly visited 1B times:
The game included a feature that allowed users to gather and talk with each other in a pizzeria, which included a piano that users could play to earn points within the game. Robinson alleges that from 2016 to 2022, Robinson’s recording of the song Maple Leaf Rag played on a two-minute loop every time a user sat down at the piano.
Robinson alleges that Binello uploaded Robinson’s recording of Maple Leaf Rag for use in MeepCity without Robinson’s knowledge or permission and that Roblox employees reviewed and approved the uploaded audio file, created a copy, assigned it a unique asset ID, and stored the copy on the Roblox server. He alleges that “thousands, if not millions,” of Roblox users downloaded his work to their boomboxes for use on the Roblox platform, each paying a fee to Roblox for doing so, and that “thousands, if not millions,” of users downloaded his work from the Roblox server to their own personal hard drives.
Direct Copyright Infringement. Roblox argued that it lacked volition over the copying. The court credits Robinson’s allegations that “Roblox employees reviewed and approved Binello’s upload of Robinson’s copyrighted work, created a copy of that work, and stored that copy on the Roblox server. Accordingly, Robinson has pleaded that Roblox caused the copying of Robinson’s work.” On this basis, the court distinguished VHT v. Zillow, which did not involve any express allegations of prescreening. Thus, the court says the question is whether “the moderation team’s approval of Binello’s upload was a but-for cause of the alleged infringement of Robinson’s copyright. Robinson alleges that it was.”
In other words, by prescreening the uploads, this court is saying that Roblox is causes the copying of all prescreened uploads…and that makes it subject to strict liability for any copyright infringements. This is a pretty shocking result because it embraces the Moderator’s Dilemma, i.e., by trying to screen for content, Roblox ends up worse off than if it had never tried. Furthermore, given Roblox’s practical need to prescreen content as part of its child safety efforts, this ruling seems to expose Roblox to a potentially infinite number of copyright claims. Roblox has to fix this ruling.
Roblox invoked the statute of limitations, because the upload occurred in 2016 and Robinson sued in 2024. The court says that it’s not clear the discovery rule applies here despite the alleged runaway success of MeepCity. “Although copyright owners have a duty of diligence to investigate potential infringement when some action calls their attention to it, they are not required to actively prowl the internet to ensure no one is using their music in video games.”
Contributory Copyright Infringement. “Robinson must show actual knowledge of specific acts of infringement, not generalized knowledge of the possibility of infringement. Roblox [sic—this should have been Robinson] has not pleaded facts to show that Roblox was aware that the recording of Maple Leaf Rag that Binello uploaded was Robinson’s copyright-protected audio recording.” This obvious hole in Robinson’s pleading highlights the shocking ruling on direct infringement, where Roblox’s lack of scienter has no bearing on its liability for direct infringement.
Vicarious Copyright Infringement. “Robinson alleges that Roblox makes money by charging developers and users to import assets and that Binello uploaded Robinson’s recording of Maple Leaf Rag as an asset to be used in MeepCity. It can plausibly be inferred from Robinson’s allegations that Roblox charged Binello a fee to upload Robinson’s work, deriving a direct financial benefit from Binello’s alleged act of copyright infringement.”
I don’t understand Roblox’s business model here. If it is charging uploaders, then this court seems to be saying that Roblox automatically receives a direct financial benefit from all infringing uploads.
DMCA Online Safe Harbors. The court says that its finding on direct financial benefit precludes the 512 safe harbor on a motion to dismiss. The court thus treats the plaintiff’s elements of a prima facie case of vicarious copyright infringement as coextensive with the safe harbor defense elements. This equation negates the safe harbor entirely for contributory and vicarious infringement, because it’s only needed when the plaintiffs establish their prima facie case, but if the prima facie case disqualifies the defendant from the defense, then it’s a null set. To avoid this trap, and in light of the statutory scheme where the DMCA only makes sense if it covers all flavors of copyright infringement for user-caused copies, courts have tried to establish some daylight between the prima facie elements and the defense elements, even if they use the same words. This court didn’t do that.
Implications. This is a rough ruling for Roblox. The net effect is that Roblox remain potentially on the hook for direct and vicarious copyright infringement for the user-uploaded recording, with possibly no DMCA online safe harbor protection. They have to get this ruling fixed or else the potential legal exposure for user-uploads could literally lead to existential liability for Roblox.
The court’s analysis felt very old school. The judge was covering venerable ground that has been addressed directly or indirectly for decades: does prescreening constitute volition for direct infringement purposes, and would that lead to a Moderator’s Dilemma? Does the phrase “direct financial benefit” mean the same thing in the prima facie elements and the 512 defense elements? I was surprised at how breezily the court handled these crucial topics, and how few citations the court included to the extensive precedent literature.
Case Citation: Robinson v. Binello, 2025 WL 892971 (N.D. Cal. March 24, 2025)
Prior Blog Posts on Roblox