Link to Webcast declared Copyright Infringement
A federal trial court judge in Texas recently ruled that one website owner’s link to a webcast posted on another website infringes the second website owner’s copyright in the webcast. You can read the case, Live Nation Motor Sports v. Davis, here.
This case offers lessons both small and large:
- One small lesson is that the statutory formalities for obtaining copyright protection and enforcing one’s copyright are particularly important for some types of works. A copyright interest arises automatically in a protectable work, whether or not one includes a copyright notice. To sue for infringement in the U.S., however, one ordinarily must register the work with the Copyright Office before filing suit. For many types of copyright material, like software, that’s all that’s required. Many software companies include a copyright notice in their programs but don’t bother registering their copyright interest in them, in part because most significant programs also are protected by patents (which generate the big money in infringement lawsuits), and in part because they typically can satisfy formalities by registering the program shortly before filing a copyright infringement suit. For live audiovisual material like the footage of motocross events at issue in Live Nation Motor Sports, however, you can sue right away if you put people on notice of your copyright interest in the material at least 48 hours before, and register your copyright in the material within three months after, its first broadcast. Live Motor Sports satisfied these formalities with respect to most of its webcasts, but my guess is that the vast majority of companies and people who want to protect the audiovisual material they release on the web don’t. Traditional radio and TV broadcasters have long been accustomed to satisfying these requirements, but most folks contributing content on the Wild Wild Web (and who would be inclined to care) probably aren’t even aware of them.
- A bigger lesson (or observation) is that law and order is fast coming to the Wild Wild Web, and this case — from Texas, nonetheless — is a case in point. The number of cases addressing a range of linking and framing practices on the web, such as Perfect 10’s pending suit against Google, is multiplying. These cases are incrementally defining the laws of trespass online. These laws of trespass will, in turn, regulate traffic patterns on the web. In a world of mash-ups, proliferating user created content, and ever more powerful forms of text based and non-text based search, we’re in ever greater need of the sort of automated licensing/permissioning solutions about which Denise blogged a few weeks ago. Lawyers negotiating paper licenses at $500 per hour? That just doesn’t scale.
December 20th 2006, 9:48pm
— Just Shelley » On Deep Linking, Dec 23rd 2006, 11:16 am