NFL Violates Copyright Act while trying to protect its copyrights
Ok. This is funny. Sivacracy friend, law professor, and former EFF attorney Wendy Seltzer posted a clip on YouTube of the NFL overstating its copyright claims to its Superbowl telecast.
You know the claim: The NFL owns all "pictures, descriptions, and accounts" of the game blah blah blah.
This has been a pet peeve of mine for years. I wrote about it in Copyrights and Copywrongs.
So the NFL sent YouTube a notice under Sec. 512 of the DMCA demanding the clip come down. YouTube complied. Then Wendy sent an appeal notice. YouTube wisely put the clip back up.
Then the NFL got ridiculous and illegal. As Wendy writes:
In apparent defiance of my counter-notification, the NFL sent YouTube another takedown notice, which YouTube followed with another takedown a few days ago, giving notice to me yesterday. Now when I sent my counter-notification to the first NFL notice, on February 14, YouTube forwarded it on to the NFL per the DMCA's specification. Since my counter-notification included a description of the clip, "an educational excerpt featuring the NFL's overreaching copyright warning aired during the Super Bowl," it put the NFL on clear notice of my fair use claim.
The DMCA way for NFL to challenge that, per 512(g)(2)(C), would be to "file[] an action seeking a court order to restrain the subscriber from engaging in infringing activity relating to the material," which they haven't. Sending a second notification that fails to acknowledge the fair use claims instead puts NFL into the 512(f)(1) category of "knowingly materially misrepresent[ing] ... that material or activity is infringing."
If the NFL deigned to respond, I expect they would argue something like "the volume of material is so high, we can't possibly keep track of all the claims of non-infringement. Our bots are entitled to a few mistakes." But if they're not able to keep track of the few counter-notifications they've received (the YouTube URL and page stayed the same at all times it's been up), how can they demand that YouTube respond accurately and expeditiously to all the DMCA notifications they send, or worse, filter all content as Viacom is demanding?
Deadspin has an account of the conflict.
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