North American Network Operators Group
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Re: DMCA Violation?

  • From: Gerald
  • Date: Thu May 08 11:20:25 2003 

On Thu, 8 May 2003 [email protected] wrote:

> We get about 250 of these a year.  The MPAA and RIAA notices read almost
> identically.  17 USC 512 is pretty clear about the ISP 'safe harbor' and what
> you have to do to keep it - basically, you as an ISP do *NOT* have to worry
> about content that happens to be on or go through your servers as a result of
> your user's actions *IF* you take action when you *do* receive an infringment
> notice (one of the *good* things about the DMCA, incidentally - fielding 250
> complaints a year is a lot easier than filtering an OC12 for content and
> worrying if you miss something).

I prefer to take a two pronged approach to these requests.

1. If it's on a web site any they provide a link to one of my servers,
then I'll jump to the site, modify the file and notify the owner. That one
is easy.

2. Some of these letters only provide IP address and Song title or Movie
title. I'm not a lwayer, but they don't have a leg to stand on if they
don't follow the law they are quoting:

 `(3) ELEMENTS OF NOTIFICATION-

   `(A) To be effective under this subsection, a notification of claimed
   infringement must be a written communication provided to the designated
   agent of a service provider that includes substantially the following:

...blah...blah

      `(iv) Information reasonably sufficient to permit the service
      provider to contact the complaining party, such as an address,
      telephone number, and, if available, an electronic mail address at
      which the complaining party may be contacted.

*** End

By my understanding, an IP address is not listed on any of that. I
don't have to waste time sifting through dialup logs, or even using an
automated process I have in place for subpoenas to answer this
request. At least if they subpoena the information they have to prove to a
judge they have a good claim. I wish I had the reference at hand, but when
they subpoena information, we bill the requestor $450 for the time to
lookup the user information. (Your Lawyer should be able to tell you the
maximum now you can request for subpoena information.)

Read the whole section 512 yourself though:

http://www.cyberspacelaw.org/dogan/dmcaisp.html

Gerald