This provision of US copyright law is best known for allowing copyright holders to ask that an online service provider (OSP, including ISPs) remove access to copyright infringing material if the copyrighted material is made available through the OSP. It is a powerful device for the protection of copyright on the internet for providers that are located in the United States, though many foreign providers may also respond to such requests for fear of litigation in the United States should they have any significant business interests in the U.S.
In exchange for this, the OSP gains:
These are the most commonly encountered parts of the act. They provide a procedure which gives the OSP a safe harbor so long as it complies with the requirements and follows the notification and counter-notification provisions.
To obtain the safe harbor the OSP must:
See also: Wikipedia's designated agent
If an infringement has occurred a copyright holder may send a written notification of claimed infringement to the designated agent. This must include the following (512(c)(3)(A)(i-vi)):
If a notice which substantially complies with these requirements is received the OSP must expeditiously remove or disable access to the allegedly infringing material (512(c)(1)(C)). So long as the notice substantially complies with clauses (ii), (iii), and (iv) the OSP must seek clarification of any unclear
aspects (512(c)(3)(B)(ii)). It is prudent to seek clarification in all cases.
After the notice has been complied with the OSP must take reasonable steps to promptly notify the alleged infringer of the action (512(g)(2)(A)). Note that the OSP is not prohibited from doing so in advance, only required to do so afterward. If there is a counter notification from the alleged infringer, the OSP must respond appropriately to it.
If the OSP complies with this and the counter notification procedures, it is safe from legal liability to its own customer as a result of taking down the material.
An alleged infringer may file a counter notification to the OSP. The counter notification must include (512(g)(3)(A-D)):
The material in this section is not the law and not legal advice, but is provided to assist the reader in understanding the various questions that arise in relation to the procedures outlined in the law.
The law provides for “expeditious” action. The meaning of expeditious in the context of this law has not yet been determined by the courts. Some suggest that the most prudent courses are to comply “immediately” or to seek immediate legal advice from qualified legal counsel. In the common law, the term “expeditious” has been interpreted according to the circumstances, allowing more time than "immediate" but not undue delay. In the commercial online world, taking more than 24 hours may well be viewed as undue delay. Black's Law Dictionary defines "expeditious" as: "rapidity in action" and "performed with, or acting with, expedition; quick; speedy." However, when legal advice is factored into the equation it is reasonable to give counsel time to review all the facts, verify the necessary elements of the notice and conduct minimal research to ascertain the current state of the law. This may reasonably occur when the material posted appears likely to be covered by a fair use, for fair use is not copyright infringement. So, in some situations it may be reasonable to determine that "expeditious" would take more than 24 hours, and if the OSP was a small not-for-profit provider, or a server run by volunteers, it may not have the resources to obtain a legal opinion with the same speed that a large multinational corporation may have resources at its disposal to comply immediately. There may not even be a person immediately available who is qualified to determine if the notice complies with the standards set forth in the act. Perhaps a reasonable court would take these factors into consideration. We will have to wait and see as the courts in the United States have yet to rule on these issues.
For a commercially run on-line provider taking action within the hour to tell a customer that a takedown notice has been received and informing them that they must immediately remove the content and confirm removal, giving them six to twelve hours to comply; and otherwise informing them that the content will be taken down or their internet connection terminated, may be considered reasonable. Some courts may find this to be too great a burden on an OSP if it receives a large number of communications at the same time or has limited resources to review § 512 notices for substantial compliance. It may also depend on how the notice is sent. If the notice is sent via regular mail or via fax, there may be a lag between the sending of the notice and its reception by those who are able to act upon it. If the notification is received by a mail delivery on a Saturday when the OSPs offices are closed and not acted upon until Monday, that may be considered reasonable.
The other issue to keep in mind is that the delay in responding may not amount to a significant amount of damages and someone who has had their material removed by the § 512 procedure late may be more than satisfied with the result; it is much less expensive than filing a copyright infringement suit in federal court that might revolve around a minor technicality of the law. Indeed one of the purposes of this section was to remove a large number of potential infringement suits from the courts when the facts revolving around infringement were basically undisputed and the damages could be minimized within a short perido without the intervention of a US federal district court judge. An infringer may be more than happy to know that the material has been taken down for the minor fee of having a lawyer draft a compliant "take down" notice rather than the costs of drafting, filing, serving and prosecuting a federal copyright infringement action.
It is also useful to remember that another law, the federal Communications Decency Act (CDA) still protects the OSP from liability for content provided by third parties (see below). Even if a removal is found not to be "expeditious" within the meaning of the law and the so-called "safe harbor" under the DCMA is lost, in many cases the OSP may still be protected. Through these two laws there are ways to balance the OSP's intent to assist with the protection of third party copyright and the desire to preserve good customer relations. There is also a question of the infringement that is placed by a third party being an issue of negligence or another tort on the part of the OSP. If the OSP takes steps considered reasonable or is found not to have a duty of care to police potential infringers on the site then the infringement may be considered "innocent" from the point of view of the OSP and the infringer may still be held to be the liable party which posts the infringing work or works.
It is sometimes stated that the OSP needs to give the alleged infringer ten days notice before acting. This is incorrect: the OSP must act expeditiously. The ten day period refers to the counter notification procedure described below after the infringing material has been removed, offering them an opportunity to counter the allegations presented to the OSP not during the stage of the so-called "take down" procedure.
It is sometimes suggested that content must be taken down before notifying the person who provided it. That is also not required, so long as the removal is expeditious. A large connectivity provider with many ISP customers would not be acting reasonably by disconnecting a whole ISP if it received a takedown notice for a web site hosted by that ISP on behalf of one of its customers. The law appears to allow the necessary flexibility to deal reasonably with relaying takedown requests to handle such situations.
Please note: all the hypothetical situations in this section are speculative scenarios and are not settled law. The law will not be completely interpreted until the courts have ruled on the various issues brought up by the law. While the suggestions here may appear to be compliant, a court may hold that none of these suggestions are in complaince with the act.
There is a common practice of providing a link to legal notices at the bottom of the main web page of a site. It may be prudent, though it is not required by the provisions of section 512 of the copyright law, to include the designated agent information on the page the legal link goes to, in addition to any other places where it is available. As long as the site gives reasonable notice that there is a method of compliance that should be sufficient. Once again the courts have not ruled on the technicalities of posting of these notices.
The law also requires "actual knowledge" of infringement before requiring action. Actual knowledge is not an opinion about infringement i.e. "I think this is infringing" or "this is copied from another site, therefore it is infringing". Since the OSP may have some potential liability to a customer under contract law for inappropriately removing the customer's material, waiting for infringement notifications before acting would appear to be a prudent course. Then, the material can be removed, with the safe harbor protecting the OSP from liability both from the customer and the third party.
In one situation (not a legal case) an online user of a message board system objected to the posting of a series of questions relating to the Bible on one of the system's private message boards. The questions had been used by The West Wing scriptwriter Aaron Sorkin. The posting involved the fictional President of the United States embarrassing another character in a dramatic scene at a fictional White House party. The online user objecting was correct that it had been used in the TV series. However, Sorkin was not the author of the original material. He had received it in repeatedly forwarded email, modified it and used it in the show. The message contained the original version plus two added paragraphs, not the show version. The original was written by Kent Ashcraft, who had effectively released it as an open letter, a work roughly comparable to a press release that the authors expected will be freely copied for further publication. The message board post was really a very clear case of fair use, not infringement. Even if it had been from the show, the use of the piece as a joke in that context would probably have been fair use [1], [1]. The clear removal of the need to make such error-prone decisions in the very complex provisions of fair use may be one of the gains of OSPs from this law.
Section (a) says that service providers aren't liable just because traffic passes through their networks, so long as it is not stored on their systems and is handled automatically by their systems and they don't control or modify it. Essentially, this says that ISPs aren't responsible for what flows through their networks, even if it is infringing and they know it. There are no takedown provisions.
The key technical distinction between 512(a) and (b), (c) and (d) is the location of the material. In the cases of caches (b), web sites (c) and search engine indexes (d), the information is presumably on systems controlled by the service provider. That is not the case for the situation covered by this subsection.
See section 512(h) below for cases seeking to use 512(c) takedown and 512(h) subpoena procedures for 512(a) situations. The January 20, 2003 ruling in the Verizon case did not use the technical difference mentioned in the previous paragraph. The December 2003 Verizon appeal decision did and overturned the original decision. A further appeal is possible, so the situation remains uncertain.
This says that system caching conducted in standard ways and not interfering with copy protection systems is fine. If the cached material is made available to end users the system provider must follow the takedown and put back provisions. This applies to situations like the Google cache and the proxy and caching servers used by many large ISPs and a very wide range of other providers.
This applies to personal home pages, web sites, internet providers, message boards, search engines and a very wide range of other services. It is the cause of the vast majority of activities relating to this law.
This also contains the takedown procedures described earlier and referenced by other parts of the act.
This brings search engines like AltaVista into the scope of the takedown and put back system.
This protects nonprofit educational institutions from liability for the actions of faculty and graduate student employees relating to course materials placed online for use within courses provided in the preceding 3 years, provided the institution doesn't receive more than 2 infringement notifications about the same individual in a 3 year period. The institution must provide informational materials which accurately describe and promote compliance with US copyright laws.
This says that anyone who makes a false claim of infringement or false counter-notification is liable for the damages suffered by the other parties, including legal fees.
This contains the put back provisions described earlier and referenced by other parts of the act.
This provides for subpoenas to identify infringers. Part (h)(2)(A) requires that the request to the court include "a copy of a notification described in subsection (c)(3)(A)" (a takedown notice, see above). Note that 512(c)(3)(A)(iii) states that the notice must identify the allegedly infringing material that is to be removed, and provide reasonably sufficient information for the service provider to locate the material residing on its system.
If the OSP is served with such a subpoena after or at the same time as a valid takedown notice, it must expeditiously provide the information required by the subpoena.
OSPs should exercise caution and ensure that they have received a valid takedown notice before disclosing the identities of their customer. It would be very prudent to seek immediate legal advice if a subpoena is received:
In 2003, the RIAA appeared to be seeking subpoenas and serving takedown notices which did not comply with these requirements, notably using the subpoena provisions for 512(a) situations, which don't provide for them. Anyone served with such a subpoena should seek the assistance of a lawyer. This situation is very controversial.
On 20 December 2003, the DSL ISP Verizon prevailed on appeal in its case seeking to prevent the use of this section for transitory network communications, the decision reversing a court order to supply customer details. Case documents [1], [1]. A further appeal by the RIAA is possible. The appeal decision accepted the argument that the key distinction was the location of the files, with this section applying only when the material is stored on equipment controlled by the OSP.
On October 6, 2003 Charter Communications became the first cable internet provider to challenge the RIAA use of this provision[1], when it filed for a motion to quash the subpoenas to obtain the identities of 150 of its customers.
This outlines the requirement not to interfere with copy protection systems and the requirement to notify users of an account termination policy for repeat offenders.
This gives the procedures for obtaining injunctions against OSPs to require them to leave material unavailable.
These sections define an OSP, state that other defences (notably the CDA, though it isn't identified specifically) aren't limited and state that parts (1), (b), (c) and (d) apply independently.Take down and put back provisions
Requirements to obtain the safe harbor
The Interim Designation of a Registered Agent is to be filed with the United States Copyright Office and must be accompanied by a $30 fee, payable to the Register of Copyrights. If mailed, the Interim Designation should be addressed to: Copyright GC/I&R, P.O. Box 70400, Southwest Station, Washington, D.C. 20024. An OSP may also file the Interim Designation by hand, by delivering to the Public Information Office of the Copyright Office, Room LM-401, James Madison Memorial Building, Library of Congress, 101 Independence Avenue, S.E., Washington, D.C., during normal business hours, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. Designations and amendments are posted online on the Copyright Office website.Notification of claimed infringement
See 512(a) and 512(h) below if the information is not stored on the system of the OSP but is instead on a system connected to the internet through it, like a home or business computer connected to the internet. Some ISPs have been served with notices for 512(a) activities even though they do not appear to be subject to these procedures. Legal liability may result if access to material is disabled or identity disclosed in this case. As of summer 2003, litigaton was proceeding and the situation remained unclear.Counter notification
Once a valid counter notification has been received the OSP must:Interpretation of the law
Providing notice of the designated agent
Actual knowledge of infringement
Other provisions
512(a) Transitory network communications
512(b) System caching
512(c) Information Residing on Systems or Networks At Direction of Users
512(d) Information Location Tools
512(e) Limitation on Liability of Nonprofit Educational Institutions
512(f) Misrepresentations
512(g) Replacement of Removed or Disabled Material and Limitation on Other Liability
512(h) Subpoena To Identify Infringer
Complying with the subpoena would risk liability from the customer if their identity is disclosed based on the improper subpoena.512(i) Conditions for Eligibility
512(j) Injunctions
512(k,l,n)