I was not using relay in a specific situation of common carriage of a message (California) or of intelligence (Massachusetts). A relay could be used in a situation of private carriage.

The YouTube embedding HTML would be something like the following:

http://a%20href=

The iframe HTML directive is a lot like the a href= directive. When the latter is clicked, the browser goes to the specified webpage. When the former directive is clicked, the browser creates a frame in the current webpage and puts the destination webpage in the frame. I don't see how there is any difference in the monetization of the YouTube video for the YouTube account holder.

Ask ChatGPT: "What does the HTML iframe directive do?" ChatGPT will explain.

First, this was not a uniform “YouTube embed” situation. The Second Circuit treated the claims differently:

The Melle Mel video was a YouTube embed, and that claim was barred because of YouTube’s license terms

The Michael Jordan video was not a YouTube embed, and that claim was revived because republishing the full video could act as a market substitute

So the opinion doesn’t say embedding is broadly protected—it shows that license + use + context control.
Second, the source matters. From the record, the Jordan video was posted to X by Daily Loud without authorization, and Townsquare then built its article around that content. There was even a separate action against Daily Loud that resulted in a default judgment, which underscores that this wasn’t a clean, authorized origin.

Third, beyond the video itself, Townsquare also extracted screenshots and used them as prominent visuals across multiple articles. The Second Circuit rejected the district court’s “de minimis” ruling for exactly that reason—the images were recognizable and centrally displayed. In other words, once the original work is clearly identifiable and used as a focal point, it’s not trivial copying, and you don’t get out of the case on that basis. The court also made clear that fair use can’t be resolved at the pleading stage on this record.
Finally, the “telegraph/relay” analogy doesn’t fit what happened here. A relay doesn’t:

Select the content

Frame it within its own article

Use it to drive traffic and revenue

Townsquare did all three. That’s why the court focused on real-world effect—whether users could consume the work there instead of going to the original source—not just where the packets originate.
So the takeaway isn’t “embedding is safe.” It’s:

YouTube embeds may be protected where a license applies

But outside that, courts look at how the work is used and whether it substitutes for the original

And those are fact-driven questions, which is why this case moves forward

At the end of the day:

It’s not about where the data lives—it’s about whether the defendant used someone else’s work to attract and monetize an audience without authorization.

That’s exactly what the Second Circuit said needs to be examined here.

I think we’re getting closer, but the gap is here: network architecture doesn’t answer copyright liability.

A few clarifications based on the opinion:

1) The Second Circuit didn’t say “all embedding is protected.”
It treated the YouTube embed separately and affirmed only that claim because of YouTube’s Terms of Service—i.e., a license-based defense. That doesn’t create a blanket rule for embedding. Outside a valid license, the question is still fair use and market effect.

2) “Relay” doesn’t resolve “use.”
Even if YouTube delivers the packets, the embedding site is still choosing, framing, and presenting the video as part of its own article. That’s why courts look at purpose and effect—especially whether the page functions as a substitute for the original. If users can watch the whole work on the defendant’s page, that can impact the market regardless of where the bytes are hosted.

3) No license = no safe harbor.
You asked how infringement happens without a relicense clause. That’s exactly the point—the legality of embedding often turns on whether a license exists and its scope. The Second Circuit allowed the YouTube embed because of the ToS; it did not extend that protection to other uses or say embedding is inherently non-infringing.

4) This case is moving forward because these are fact questions.
The court said you can’t resolve fair use on the pleadings where full-work use could be a substitute. That’s independent of any “common carrier” framing.

So unbundling can describe functions, but it doesn’t change the core test:

Is the defendant using the work, and does that use substitute for or exploit the original in the market—absent a license?

That’s what discovery is for here.

I meant.

Current Section 230 caselaw collapses transmission/carriage and editorial discretion/content creation into a single category of publishing in defiance of long established caselaw and without authority in the statute.

I was not equating Section 230 with copyright. I noted that the Court did not look at the issue of holistic webpage service that infringed copyright but looked different functions that the served webpage performed. Current Section 230 caselaw collapses transmission and editorial discretion/common carriage into a single category of publishing in defiance of long established caselaw and without authority in the statute.

Courts seem to handle copyright in the context of the Internet consistently. Section 230 caselaw looks more like legislation by federal judges.

If I understand correctly, Townsquare did not embed a tweet. It embedded a video that was hosted by YouTube and referenced in a Tweet.

I think the 2nd Circuit is telling us either form of embedding is protected by the YouTube agreement relicensing clause.

If a user uploaded a video to YouTube for a public audience of endusers, and if another website embeds the YouTube video in its own webpage, this website seems to be in some sense a relay of the video from YouTube.

YouTube still transmits the video's Audio-Video packets to the enduser. I am not sure how the copyright infringement takes place even if there were no relicense clause in YouTube agreement.

The unbundling point is interesting, but it doesn’t carry the day in a copyright case like this.

Even if you separate “transmission” from “editorial” functions, Townsquare wasn’t acting as a neutral relay. It selected a specific video, embedded it into its own article, framed it with its own headline and narrative, and used it as the primary draw for traffic. That’s not passive carriage—it’s editorial use of a copyrighted work.

Two additional problems with the telegraph analogy here:

Copyright ≠ Section 230
Section 230 doesn’t apply to copyright claims. So whether something is “publishing” vs “carriage” for 230 purposes doesn’t resolve infringement. The analysis turns on use, purpose, and market effect, not just function labels.
Market substitution still applies regardless of architecture
The Second Circuit focused on the real-world effect: if users can watch the entire work on the embedding site, that can function as a substitute for the original. That question doesn’t disappear just because the bytes are hosted elsewhere.

Unbundling might help describe what a platform does internally, but it doesn’t change the key issue here:

Was the defendant using someone else’s work in a way that could replace the original or exploit its value?

That’s why the court sent this to discovery—because that question is fact-driven, not something you can resolve by calling it a “relay.”

The content remains at the origin node
The embedding site facilitates transmission (relay)/display
No authorship or copying occurs

That is even closer to telegraph relay than most platform functions.

A Court Needs to Apply the Unbundling Guidance of NARUC II

Current Section 230 caselaw creates a legal morass by considering a website or a social medium platform to be a holistic unit in terms of function.

Here is the proper doctrinal rule.

A single entity may perform multiple legally distinct functions. Liability and immunity must be determined at the level of the specific function at issue, not at the level of the entity as a whole.

Applied here:

Carriage/transmission/relay layer → not “publishing”
Editorial layer → publishing
Hybrid services → must be analyzed function-by-function

For the most part a social medium platform is a common carrier of intelligence by electricity and does not apply editorial discretion. It applies a transmission policy. Loper-Bright demands that a court analyze function-by-function and slap common carriage violations harshly as was the practice before courts were distracted by the "wow factor" of the World Wide Web.

The Second Circuit didn’t “expand liability”—it corrected an overly broad application of defenses at the pleading stage. The Court made two straightforward points:

Republishing an entire video—especially where it may function as a market substitute—can’t be dismissed as fair use without a factual record.
The de minimis doctrine doesn’t apply where the copied material is clearly recognizable and used as a focal point, which is exactly what happened with the screenshots.

That’s not a radical shift, it’s a return to a fact-based analysis, which is what copyright law has always required.

If anything, the decision reinforces that:

Fair use is contextual, not automatic
“Thumbnail” isn’t a magic word that eliminates liability
And courts shouldn’t short-circuit cases where commercial use and market harm are plausibly alleged

This case doesn’t decide liability, it just says the defendant has to actually prove its defenses instead of winning by default at the pleading stage.

That’s not a problem for legitimate journalism. It’s only a problem for uses that rely on taking the work itself as the primary draw.