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Category: Safe Harbor

Whether the Copyright Office can help stakeholders identify and adopt standard technical measures without congressional action?

As noted in the Report, the Office believes that the identification and adoption of standard technical measures (“STMs”) may provide an opportunity to improve the overall functioning of the notice-and-takedown system through relatively small, incremental changes that nonetheless could have a large impact on the ability of all rightsholders to protect their rights online.

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Technological Changes Since the 1990s Have Changed the Landscape in which Section 512 Operates

The technology that allows copyright owners to distribute content directly to consumers’ living rooms via streaming services also enables new forms of piracy: streaming of unlicensed content and stream-ripping – that is, using software to make an unlicensed copy of streamed content that would otherwise be licensed.

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Revisions to section 512 should take into account differences within and among stakeholder classes

Requirements that pose a relatively minimal burden for large, established OSPs could be crippling for a small startup that lacks access to enterprise-level technology. Larger rightsholders with in-house enforcement teams may have more resources to monitor online infringement than small rightsholders that must face a choice between devoting their time to creative endeavors or to enforcing their rights.

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Section 512 report – Notice-and-Takedown Process

OSPs seeking protection under the safe harbors in sections 512(b), (c), or (d), must, in addition to the section 512(i) requirements, maintain a compliant notice-and-takedown process by responding expeditiously to remove or disable access to material claimed to be infringing upon receipt of proper notice from a copyright owner or the owner’s authorized agent.

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Which clarifications or revisions would be the most beneficial for improving section 512?

First, the Office recommends that Congress clarify the distinction between “actual knowledge” and “red flag knowledge.” Court decisions interpreting the red flag knowledge provision have often required a level of specificity regarding the types of information from which infringing activity is present as to blur the line between actual and red flag knowledge and conflate the existence of either knowledge type with receipt of a takedown notice from a rightsholder.

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Section 512 report – general overview of section 512

Secondary Liability

Secondary liability doctrines enable copyright owners to bring claims against third parties that have some relationship to persons who themselves commit infringement (i.e., “direct” infringers). As the Supreme Court has noted, “although ‘the Copyright Act does not expressly render anyone liable for infringement committed by another,’ these doctrines of secondary liability emerged from common law principles and are well established in the law.”

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Russian Facebook VKontakte intends to settle copyright infringement lawsuit

Many Russian right holders have tried to “punish” Russian popular social network VKontakte – Russian Facebook – for copyright infringement. Users of this social network like Vkontakte because you can get satisfaction for your taste in music, video or even books. But in most cases right holders failed because Vkontakte’s position is always the same – “we are only informational intermediary”, therefore “we are not liable if the user posts or links to any illegal content”, “we can only takedown such content in our network”.

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