A First-Hand Look at the Messy Underbelly of DMCA 512(c) Takedowns
From 2009-2013, I used Scribd as my primary hosting service. I posted nearly 800 files there over a roughly four year period. Progressively, I became disenchanted with Scribd, including their efforts to put my uploads behind their own paywall and…
Pre-Publication Content Moderation Can Disqualify Services from the DMCA 512(c) Safe Harbor–McGucken v. ShutterStock
The Second Circuit’s 512 jurisprudence is an unpredictable roller coaster. I can think of at least two other times when the Second Circuit has reversed a clean lower court ruling to unleash further plaintiff-favorable doctrinal chaos (the Viacom v. YouTube…
Fair Use Blocks Privacy-Motivated Copyright Lawsuit–MCM v. Perry
The case involves a Twitter user, Perry (a/k/a “I, Hypocrite”), who tweet-critiqued a crypto company Celsius Networks. The first tweet in the sequence referenced a business setback for Celsius. The second tweet in the sequence contained a collage of two…
This Week in the “DMCA Eating Copyright Law”: Cordova v. Huneault (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Kieran McCarthy A recent Northern District of California opinion in Cordova v. Huneault sent another bat-signal to those who follow this area of the law: copyright law in the context of public content is being consumed by…
A Volcanic Opinion in the Fifth Circuit Destabilizes International Copyright Law—Vetter v. Resnik (Guest Blog Post)
By Guest Blogger Tyler Ochoa [Eric’s note: this is another Long Read post from Prof. Ochoa, clocking in at over 10k words.] Territoriality is a fundamental principle of international intellectual property law: each nation governs patents, trademarks, and copyrights within…
Relitigating hiQ Labs and Scraping Through the Lens of DMCA 1201 Anti-Circumvention (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Kieran McCarthy A series of prominent web-scraping lawsuits are revisiting the fundamentals of public data access. And in so doing, with a slight reframing of a relatively settled legal issue, major platforms are challenging the presumption that…
It Takes a Lot for 512(f) Claims to Survive a Motion to Dismiss–Cordova v. Huneault
Cordova publishes videos on a YouTube channel,”Denver Metro Audits.” He claims that the defendants republish substantial portions of those videos on their YouTube channel, “Frauditor Troll Channel.” Cordova sent DMCA takedown notices targeting the defendants’ videos, but the defendants counternoticed…
Copyright Takedown Notices Don’t Require Services to Find and Remove Other Identical Copies–Athos v. YouTube
I previously summarized this case: Athos owns the copyrights to many classic Mexican films. Users regularly upload its film clips to YouTube. These uploads have irritated Athos since 2014. However, Athos rejected YouTube’s fast-lane options for copyright owners (such as…
DMCA 512(c) Safe Harbor Applies to Embedding–Harrington v. Pinterest
This is a long-running class action copyright case (filed in 2020!) led by the photographer Blaine Harrington (now deceased). The plaintiffs complain about user-uploaded photos appearing in Pinterest’s off-website notifications to its users (e.g., email, in-app, and mobile push). This…
2025 Internet Law Year-in-Review
2025 is the Trump 2.0 era, so you won’t find much upbeat news in this Internet Law year-in-review. 10. Are Websites Legally Equivalent to Exploding Coke Bottles? Traditionally, tort law distinguishes between tangible items (chattels) and intangible services. Several doctrines…