On Tue, Feb 27, 2001 at 01:52:20PM -0800, Ian Clarke wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 27, 2001 at 01:35:26PM -0800, Troy B Klyber wrote:
> > Also, this can't be construed as legal advice, but I for one have tried to
> > take advantage of the protections given to ISPs by the DMCA by registering
> > my node with the Copyright Office and putting a notice on the computer
> > that runs my node. See http://troyboy.dyndns.org.
>
> This is interesting, can you go into more detail about:
>
> 1) Why you did this?
Keep in mind while reading this that I am not even a lawyer quite yet, and
if I were, I wouldn't be throwing around actual legal advice. So, take
this all with a grain of salt:
The so-called "safe harbor" of the DMCA protects service providers ("SPs")
who (a) transmit, route, or otherwise provide network connections
for material, (b) cache material, and (c) store information at the
direction of a user. See 17 U.S.C. 512.
For (a), (b), and (c), the SP qualifies for protection by (1) adopting and
informing its users of a a policy that "provides for the termination in
appropriate circumstances of subscribers and account holders of the
service provider's system or network who are repeat infringers" AND (2)
"accomodat[ing] and [] not interfer[ing] with standard technical measures
[used to identify or protect copyrighted works]". See 17 U.S.C. 512(i).
Napster failed to adopt a policy, so the District Court judge said that
section 512 gave them no protection. The Circuit Court didn't really say
much about this issue at this stage of the litigation, so this law is
still very much unsettled.
These requirements are the most puzzling with respect to Freenet. How do
you adopt a policy and inform "subscribers and account holders"?? One
answer is that there are no subscribers to inform. But, a safer approach
might be to at least have a copy of a sample "policy" that a node operator
could elect to use to prevent "repeat infringers." Complying with the
"standard technical measures" will probably not be an issue until SDMI
gets its act together.
For SPs that do (c) (sounds like Freenet, unless Freenet is just "caching"
(b) (this seems to depend in a practical way on the size of the
datastore)), he SP must also provide an agent that a copyright owner can
contact to have infringing material removed from the servers. The SP must
post this contact information on its webpage (and through its "service"),
register with the Copyright Office, and pay a $20 fee. See
http://www.loc.gov/copyright/onlinesp/. Then, if the copyright owner can
provide specific information about where the infringing material is
located (next to impossible with Freenet), the SP has to remove the
material. I went ahead and took these steps because the cost of doing so
was minimal and it could potentially short-circuit a contributory
copyright infringement suit.
One way to make this easier for mass adoption by node operators would be
to have a central location (Freenet, Inc.'s webpage?) where node operators
could list their contact information, and Freenet, Inc. would be the
"service provider" that registered itself with the Copyright Office for
the $20 fee. I'm not sure if this satisfies the law or opens up Freenet,
Inc. to more liability, but it is something that a lawyer could look at
more closely. Of course, several lawyers will all give different opinions
until this stuff is tested in court. In the meantime, I'd like to minimize
my liability the best that I can!
> 2) How it protects you?
>
> Perhaps if this does actually afford any protection, we could make it
> part of the official release somehow....
>
> Ian.
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