Copyright Unbalanced: From Incentive to Excess (11 page)

The reasoning of a later case,
Golan v. Holder
, suggests that the “traditional contours” language will not go far to protect the public from expansive, speech-restricting copyright laws.
⁶⁴
And the Second Circuit Court of Appeals was even willing to uphold an injunction against a website for publishing the DeCSS code.
⁶⁵
But even in light of these decisions, there is a strong case to be made that the DMCA alters the traditional contours of copyright law, by rendering illegal certain speech-facilitating technology, and by dramatically curtailing the reach of fair use in digital content protected by technical measures. After all,
Eldred
specifically named fair use as a traditional, speech-protecting aspect of copyright law.

The DMCA—including both the anticircumvention provisions and the safe harbors—is not sufficiently protective of First Amendment values. But whether the law is technically unconstitutional is almost beside the point. As the English implicitly acknowledged when the printing acts lapsed, there are competing values at stake when regulating media. There’s the goal of providing incentives to publish, but there are also the goals of free expression, competition, and innovation. The DMCA, as well as any future changes proposed to the Copyright Act, must be understood in terms of these goals. And because the DMCA is so woefully unprotective of speech and restrictive to competition, it must be reconsidered.

NOTES

1
.    See “Political Payoffs and Middle Class Layoffs,” YouTube video, 0:36, posted by “mittromney,” July 16, 2012,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIajeW6xPnI
; Timothy B. Lee, “Music Publisher Uses DMCA to Take Down Romney Ad of Obama Crooning,”
Ars Technica
(blog), July 16, 2012,
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/major-label-uses-dmca-to-take-down-romney-ad-of-obama-crooning
/.

2
.    See Wendy Seltzer, “Free Speech Unmoored in Copyright’s Safe Harbor: Chilling Effects of the DMCA on the First Amendment,”
Harvard Journal of Law & Technology
24 (2010): 171–73.

3
.    Lee, “Music Publisher Uses DMCA to Take Down Romney Ad.”

4
.    Seltzer, “Free Speech Unmoored,” 172.

5
.    See 17 U.S.C. § 107: “The fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.”

6
.    See 17 U.S.C. § 1201–5 (anticircumvention provisions); 17 U.S.C. § 512 (safe harbor provision).

7
.    Jonathan Zittrain, “The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It” (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008), 104–5.

8
.    Congress doubled the range of statutory damages in 1989, to a maximum of $100,000 per willful infringement.
Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988
, Public Law 100–568, 102 Stat. 2853 (1988); Pamela Samuelson and Tara Wheatland, “Statutory Damages in Copyright Law: A Remedy in Need of Reform,”
William and Mary Law Review
51 (2009): 439, 455n62.

9
.    See
Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999
, Public Law 106–160, 113 Stat. 1774 (1999).

10
.  Brad Stone, “Amazon Erases Orwell Books from Kindle,”
New York Times
, July 18, 2009,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html
.

11
.  Jessica Litman,
Digital Copyright
(New York: Prometheus Books, 2006), 134–35.

12
.  Ibid., 94–95: cites Information Infrastructure Task Force,
Intellectual Property and the National Information Infrastructure: The Report of the Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights
(Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 1995),
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/doc/ipnii/
, 19–130.

13
.  17 U.S.C. § 512(g).

14
.  See 17 U.S.C. § 512(g) (specifying restoration and counter-notification procedures for material stored with a service provider, but not for material discoverable through information-location tools).

15
.  17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)(A).

16
.  17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)(C)–(D).

17
.  The statute stated, “No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic” in any technology or service that is “primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a [TPM]; … has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a [TPM]; or … is marketed … with that person’s knowledge for use in circumventing a [TPM].” 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(2), (b).

18
.  Some other, very limited exceptions to the anticircumvention provisions were included in the statute for nonprofit libraries, archives, educational institutions, law enforcement, intelligence, other government activities, reverse engineering, encryption research, and security testing. See 17 U.S.C. § 1201(d)–(j).

19
.  17 U.S.C. § 1203(c).

20
.  17 U.S.C. § 1203(b)(1).

21
.  17 U.S.C. § 1203(b)(6).

22
.  17 U.S.C. § 1203(c)(4).

23
.  17 U.S.C. § 1204(a)(1).

24
.  17 U.S.C. § 1204(a)(2).

25
.  Universal City Studios v. Corley, 273 F.3d 429, 437 (2d. Cir. 2001).

26
.  See DVD Copy Control Association website, accessed July 15, 2012,
http://www.dvdcca.org
/.

27
.  Timothy B. Lee, “Circumventing Competition: The Perverse Consequences of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act” (Cato Institute Policy Analysis No. 564, March 21, 2006),
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa564.pdf
.

28
.  Wendy Seltzer, “The Imperfect Is the Enemy of the Good,”
Berkeley Technology Law Journal
25 (2011): 909, 947n171.

29
.  37 C.F.R. § 201.40 (2010).

30
.  See Fred Von Lohmann,
Unintended Consequences: Twelve Years under the DMCA
(Electronic Frontier Foundation, Feb. 2010), 6.

31
.  Ibid., 5–6.

32
.  Ibid., 11.

33
.  Ibid., 6.

34
.  See 17 U.S.C. § 107 (“[T]he fair use of a copyrighted work … for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching … , scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.”).

35
.  Edward Lee, “Freedom of the Press 2.0,”
Georgia Law Review
42 (2008): 309, 322–23.

36
.  Ibid., 323.

37
.  Ibid., 324; see also Lyman Ray Patterson,
Copyright in Historical Perspective
(Nashville, Vanderbilt University Press, 1968), 114.

38
.  Lee, “Freedom of the Press,” 325.

39
.  Ibid.

40
.  8 Anne, ch. 19. The statute also granted a copyright for 21 years to books already in print and preserved the “printing patent,” a right to publish a work that was granted by the sovereign. Ibid.; Patterson,
Copyright in Historical Perspective
, 78–80, 143.

41
.  “Copyright was born with freedom of the press, not against it.” Lee, “Freedom of the Press,” 330.

42
.  John Locke,
Locke: Political Essays
, ed. Mark Goldie (Cambridge University Press, 1997), 331.

43
.  Lee, “Freedom of the Press,” 334.

44
.  James Iredell,
Answers to Mr. Mason’s Objections to the New Constitution
(1788), reprinted in
Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States
1787–1788, ed. Paul L. Ford (1888),
http://files.libertyfund.org/files/1670/Ford_1338.pdf
, 360–61.

45
.  See, e.g., Eugene Volokh, “Freedom for the Press as an Industry, or for the Press as a Technology? From the Framing to Today,”
University of Pennsylvania Law Review
160 (2012): 459; Lee, “Freedom of the Press,” 339–56; David A. Anderson, “Freedom of the Press,”
Texas Law Review
80 (2002): 429, 446–47: “To the generation of the Framers of the First Amendment, ‘the press’ meant ‘the printing press.’ It referred less to a journalistic enterprise than to the technology of printing and the opportunities for communication that the technology created. ‘Freedom of the press’ referred to the freedom of the people to publish their views, rather than the freedom of journalists to pursue their craft.”

46
.  Volokh, “Freedom for the Press as an Industry, or for the Press as a Technology?,” 462.

47
.  United States v. Paramount Pictures, 334 U.S. 131, 166 (1948).

48
.  435 U.S. 765, 800n5 (Chief Justice Burger, concurring).

49
.  The first “step backward” was actually the Audio Home Recording Act, passed in 1992, which required producers of digital audio recording devices to incorporate a copy protection system into their products and forbade circumvention of the system. 17 U.S.C. § 1002(a), (c). However, the act became comparatively insignificant when digital audio recording devices failed to gain popularity.

50
.  Mike Masnick, “Even Obama Is a Pirate: BMG Issues New Takedown on Original Obama Singing Al Green Clip,”
Techdirt
(blog), July 17, 2012,
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120717/13500819733/bmg-doubles-down-issues-takedown-original-clip-obama-singing-al-green.shtml
.

51
.  Mike Masnick, “Key Techdirt SOPA/PIPA Post Censored by Bogus DMCA Takedown Notice,”
Techdirt
(blog), Feb. 27, 2012,
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120223/15102217856/key-techdirt-sopapipa-post-censored-bogus-dmca-takedown-notice.shtml
.

52
.  See notes 14–15 and accompanying text.

53
.  Mike Masnick, “Company That Issued Bogus Takedown Says It Was All a Mistake, Apologizes,”
Techdirt
(blog), Feb. 28, 2012,
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120228/09424117897/company-that-issued-bogus-takedown-says-it-was-all-mistake-apologizes.shtml
.

54
.  “Justin Bieber Music Videos Yanked from YouTube,”
TMZ
, Aug 29, 2011,
http://www.tmz.com/2011/08/29/justin-bieber-music-video-vevo-youtube-hacked-ilcreation-baby-somebody-to-love-that-should-be-me
.

55
.  Mike Masnick, “Double Bogus DMCA Takedown All The Way!,”
Techdirt
(blog), Sept. 7, 2011,
http://www.techdirt.com/article/20110907/09453415839/double-bogus-dmca-takedown-all-way.shtml
.

56
.  Mike Masnick, “Romance Author Adele Dubois Receives Takedown on Blog Post for Having the Same Name as Singer Adele,”
Techdirt
(blog), May 18, 2012,
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120517/17443418961/romance-author-adele-dubois-receives-takedown-blog-post-having-same-name-as-singer-adele.shtml
.

57
.  Eric Limer, “NASA’s Official Mars Landing Video Got Taken off YouTube over Bogus Copyright Claims,”
Gizmodo
(blog), Aug. 6, 2012,
http://gizmodo.com/5932089/nasas-official-rover-landing-video-got-taken-off-youtube-over-bogus-copyright-claims
.

58
.  Dragos Pirvu, “Automated DMCA Takedown Notices Are Illegal and They Must Be Sanctioned, Says EFF,”
Unbiased Tech
, March 9, 2012,
http://www.unbiasedtech.com/illegal-automated-dmca-takedown-notices-eff
/; Mike Masnick, “EFF Argues That Automated Bogus DMCA Takedowns Violate the Law and Are Subject to Sanctions,”
Techdirt
(blog), March 8, 2012,
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120308/03505018034/eff-argues-that-automated-bogus-dmca-takedowns-violate-law-are-subject-to-sanctions.shtml
.

59
.  See “EFF Calls Foul on Robo-Takedowns” (Electronic Frontier Foundation, March 6, 2012), https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-calls-foul-robo-takedowns/; 17 U.S.C. § 512(f).

60
.  See Felix T. Wu, “Collateral Censorship and the Limits of Intermediary Immunity,”
Notre Dame Law Review
87 (2011): 293–94, 300–4; J. M. Balkin, “Free Speech and Hostile Environments,”
Columbia Law Review
99 (1999): 2295, 2298–99 (1999); Michael I. Meyerson, “Authors, Editors, and Uncommon Carriers: Identifying the ‘Speaker’ within the New Media,”
Notre Dame Law Review
79 (1995): 116–24.

61
.  Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186, 219 (2003).

62
.  Ibid., 221.

63
.  Ibid., 219–20.

64
.  132 S.Ct. 873 (2012) (rejecting an argument that removing existing works from the public domain and placing them under copyright violated the traditional contours of copyright law).

65
.  Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Corley, 273 F.3d 429 (2d. Cir. 2001).