In re Aimster Copyright Litigation

Last updated
In re Aimster Copyright Litigation
Court United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
Full case nameIn re Aimster Copyright Litigation. Appeal of: John Deep, Defendant.
DecidedJune 30, 2003
Citation(s)334 F.3d 643 (7th Cir. 2003)
Court membership
Judge(s) sitting Richard Posner, Kenneth Francis Ripple, Ann Claire Williams
Case opinions
MajorityPosner, joined by a unanimous court

In re Aimster Copyright Litigation, 334 F.3d 643 (7th Cir. 2003), [1] was a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit addressed copyright infringement claims brought against Aimster, concluding that a preliminary injunction against the file-sharing service was appropriate because the copyright owners were likely to prevail on their claims of contributory infringement, and that the services could have non-infringing users was insufficient reason to reverse the district court's decision. The appellate court also noted that the defendant could have limited the quantity of the infringements if it had eliminated an encryption system feature, and if it had monitored the use of its systems. This made it so that the defense did not fall within the safe harbor of 17 U.S.C. § 512(i). [2] and could not be used as an excuse to not know about the infringement. In addition, the court decided that the harm done to the plaintiff was irreparable and outweighed any harm to the defendant created by the injunction.

Contents

Background

Recording industry owners of copyrights in musical performances brought contributory and vicarious infringement action, a type of secondary liability, against a website operator called Aimster, a company similar to Napster which facilitated the swapping of digital copies of songs over the internet. [3]

Owners of copyrighted popular music claimed that John Deep ("Deep")'s Aimster Internet service was a contributory and vicarious infringer of these copyrights. The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, [4] Marvin E. Aspen, Jr., granted preliminary injunction for plaintiffs, which shut down Defendant's service until the suit was resolved, Aimster appealed from this preliminary injunction to the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. [3]

The defendants argued that, unlike Napster, they designed their technology in such a way that they had no way of monitoring the content of swapped files. [1] Someone who wanted to use Aimster's basic service for the first time to swap files had to download Aimster's software and then had to register on the system. After doing this he might designate any other registered user called a buddy, with whom he might communicate directly whenever both of them were online, and have the capability of interchanging music files. If the user did not designate any buddies, then all the users of the system became automatically his buddies to share files.

Opinion

The court held that in this case the users of the systems were the direct infringers, these who are ignorant or more commonly disdainful of copyright and in any event discount the likelihood of being sued or prosecuted for copyright infringement, however companies such as Aimster that facilitate their infringement, even if they are not themselves direct infringers can be liable for copyright violations as contributory infringers. [5]

The court analyzed that the copyrighted materials might sometimes be shared between users of such a system without the authorization of the holder of the copyright owner and, in this case, fair-use privilege will not make the Aimster a contributory infringer. As mentioned in the Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., [6] also known as the Betamax case, the producer of a product which has substantial noninfringing uses is not a contributory infringer, merely because some of the uses actually made of the product are infringing. In that case, a video reproducer machine called Betamax, the predecessor of today's videocassette recorders was at the issue. The court explained about the sale of the Betamax that the ability of a service provider to prevent its customers from infringing is a factor to be considered in determining whether the provider is or not a contributory infringer. [4] Aimster, however, was not able to produce any evidence that its service had ever been used for a noninfringing purpose, instead the facts showed that Aimster encouraged these infringing activities. [7]

The court rejected Aimster's argument that to prevail the recording industry should prove that some actual loss of money has occurred because of the copying that Aimster service's contribute in producing. The court explained that although the court, in Betamax, emphasized that the plaintiffs had failed to show that they had sustained substantial harm from Sony's video recorder, it did so in the context of assessing the argument that time shifting of television programs was fair use rather than infringement. The court believed that Betamax was not hurting the copyright owners because it was enlarging the audience for their programs, as well as advertisements. However it was also clear that even though without proving economic loss, compensation for damages can not be awarded, plaintiff could still obtain statutory damages and an injunction. [1]

The Court also rejected Aimster's argument that because the court said in Betamax that mere constructive knowledge of infringing uses is not enough for contributory infringement (464 U.S. at 439, 104 S.Ct. 774 [6] ) and the encryption feature of Aimster's service prevented Deep from knowing what songs were being copied by the users of his system, Aimster lacked the knowledge of infringing uses that liability for contributory infringement requires. The opinion also makes it clear that a service provider that fits within the characteristics of a contributory infringer does not obtain any sort of immunity by using encryption, to avoid knowledge of the unlawful purposes for which the service is being used. Actually, a tutorial for the Aimster software showed as its only examples of file sharing the sharing of copyrighted works. In this sense the tutorial was nothing but an invitation to infringe this copyrighted music, same invitation that the Supreme Court found could not find in the Sony case. [6]

Willful blindness is knowledge, in copyright law (where indeed it may be enough that the defendant should have known of the direct infringement, see Casella v. Morris), [8] as it is in the law generally. Another example is Louis Vuitton S.A. v. Lee, 875 F.2d 584, 590 (7th Cir. 1989) (contributory trademark infringement). [9] The doctrine of willful blindness is established in many criminal statutes, which require proof that a defendant acted knowingly or willfully. Courts have held that defendants cannot escape the reach of these statutes by deliberately shielding themselves, from clear evidence of critical facts that are strongly suggested by the circumstances, understanding that those who behave in such manner should be treated as those who had actual knowledge.

Lastly, the court established that the DMCA § 512 "safe harbors" were unavailable because Aimster had done nothing to comply reasonably with Section 512(i)'s requirement to establish a policy to terminate repeat infringers and instead even encouraged repeat infringement.

Opinion of the Judge

The opinion was written by Judge Richard Posner, known for his publications on law and economics, and followed closely on the heels of the Ninth Circuit's decision in A & M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc. [10] [11]

Conclusion

The decision of the District Court was affirmed, concluding that a preliminary injunction against the file-sharing service was appropriate.

Subsequent developments

Petition for writ of certiorari to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit denied. [source 1]

See also

Related Research Articles

Napster is a set of three music-focused online services. It was founded in 1999 as a pioneering peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing Internet software that emphasized sharing digital audio files, typically audio songs, encoded in MP3 format. As the software became popular, the company ran into legal difficulties over copyright infringement. It ceased operations and was eventually acquired by Roxio. Napster became an online music store until it was merged with Rhapsody from Best Buy on December 1, 2011.

Grokster Ltd. was a privately owned software company based in Nevis, West Indies that created the Grokster peer-to-peer file-sharing client in 2001 that used the FastTrack protocol. Grokster Ltd. was rendered extinct in late 2005 by the United States Supreme Court's decision in MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd. The court ruled against Grokster's peer-to-peer file sharing program for computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, effectively forcing the company to cease operations.

MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., 545 U.S. 913 (2005), is a United States Supreme Court decision in which the Court unanimously held that defendant peer-to-peer file sharing companies Grokster and Streamcast could be sued for inducing copyright infringement for acts taken in the course of marketing file sharing software. The plaintiffs were a consortium of 28 of the largest entertainment companies.

A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc., 239 F.3d 1004 (2001) was a landmark intellectual property case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the ruling of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, holding that defendant, peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing service Napster, could be held liable for contributory infringement and vicarious infringement of the plaintiffs' copyrights. This was the first major case to address the application of copyright laws to peer-to-peer file sharing.

Secondary liability, or indirect infringement, arises when a party materially contributes to, facilitates, induces, or is otherwise responsible for directly infringing acts carried out by another party. The US has statutorily codified secondary liability rules for trademarks and patents, but for matters relating to copyright, this has solely been a product of case law developments. In other words, courts, rather than Congress, have been the primary developers of theories and policies concerning secondary liability.

<i>BMG Music v. Gonzalez</i>

BMG Music v. Gonzalez, 430 F.3d 888, was a civil case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld a lower court's summary judgment that the defendant had committed copyright infringement. The decision is noteworthy for rejecting the defendant's fair use defense, which had rested upon the defendant's contention that she was merely "sampling" songs with the intention of possibly purchasing the downloaded songs in the future, which is known as "Try before you buy".

Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984), also known as the “Betamax case”, is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States which ruled that the making of individual copies of complete television shows for purposes of time shifting does not constitute copyright infringement, but is fair use. The Court also ruled that the manufacturers of home video recording devices, such as Betamax or other VCRs, cannot be liable for infringement. The case was a boon to the home video market, as it created a legal safe haven for the technology.

<i>Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc.</i>

Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., 508 F.3d 1146 was a case in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit involving Perfect 10, Inc., Amazon.com, Inc. and Google, Inc. The court held that Google's framing and hyperlinking as part of an image search engine constituted a fair use of Perfect 10's images because the use was highly transformative, overturning most of the district court's decision.

Inwood Laboratories Inc. v. Ives Laboratories, Inc., 456 U.S. 844 (1982), is a United States Supreme Court case, in which the Court confirmed the application of and set out a test for contributory trademark liability under § 32 of the Lanham Act.

<i>Viacom International Inc. v. YouTube, Inc.</i> U.S. District Court case

Viacom International, Inc. v. YouTube, Inc., No. 07 Civ. 2103, is a U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York case in which Viacom sued YouTube, a video-sharing site owned by Google, alleging that YouTube had engaged in "brazen" and "massive" copyright infringement by allowing users to upload and view hundreds of thousands of videos owned by Viacom without permission. A motion for summary judgment seeking dismissal was filed by Google and was granted in 2010 on the grounds that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's "safe harbor" provisions shielded Google from Viacom's copyright infringement claims. In 2012, on appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, it was overturned in part. On April 18, 2013, District Judge Stanton again granted summary judgment in favor of defendant YouTube. An appeal was begun, but the parties settled in March 2014.

A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc., 114 F.Supp.2d 896 (2000), was the district court case which preceded the landmark intellectual property case of A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc., 239 F.3d 1004 (2001). The case was heard by Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Napster appealed this case to United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

<i>Arista Records LLC v. Lime Group LLC</i>

Arista Records LLC v. Lime Group LLC, 715 F. Supp. 2d 481, is a United States district court case in which the Southern District of New York held that Lime Group LLC, the defendant, induced copyright infringement with its peer-to-peer file sharing software, LimeWire. The court issued a permanent injunction to shut it down. The lawsuit is a part of a larger campaign against piracy by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

<i>Flava Works Inc. v. Gunter</i> 2012 US decision on copyright infringement

Flava Works, Inc v. Gunter, 689 F.3d 754, is a decision by the United States Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, authored by Judge Richard Posner, which held that Marques Gunter, the sole proprietor of the site myVidster.com, a social bookmarking website that enables its users to share videos posted elsewhere online through embedded frames, was not liable for its users' sharing and embedding of copyrighted videos. The court of appeals reversed the decision of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, which had granted a preliminary injunction against myVidster, citing sufficient knowledge of infringement on Gunter's part, while denying safe harbor defense under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The Court held that Gunter was not directly liable because the copyrighted content was not stored on myVidster's servers, and was not contributorily liable because there was no evidence that conduct by myVidster increased the amount of infringement.

<i>Sony BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum</i>

Sony BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum is the appeals lawsuit which followed the U.S. District Court case Sony BMG v. Tenenbaum, No. 07cv11446-NG.

<i>Cambridge University Press v. Patton</i>

Cambridge University Press et al. v. Patton et al., 1:2008cv01425, was a case in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in which three publishers, Cambridge University Press, SAGE Publications, and Oxford University Press, initially filed suit in 2008 against Georgia State University for copyright infringement.

<i>Capitol Records, LLC v. ReDigi Inc.</i>

Capitol Records, LLC v. ReDigi Inc., 934 F. Supp. 2d 640 , is a case from the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York concerning copyright infringement of digital music. In ReDigi, record label Capitol Records claimed copyright infringement against ReDigi, a service that allows resale of digital music tracks originally purchased from the iTunes Store. Capitol Records' motion for a preliminary injunction against ReDigi was denied, and oral arguments were given on October 5, 2012.

<i>Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. v. Fung</i>

Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. v. Fung 710 F.3d 1020 No. 10-55946, was a United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit case in which seven film studios including Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., Disney and Twentieth Century Fox sued Gary Fung, the owner of isoHunt Web Technologies, Inc., for contributory infringement of their copyrighted works. The panel affirmed in part and vacated in part the decision of United States District Court for the Central District of California that the services and websites offered by isoHunt Web Technologies allowed third parties to download infringing copies of Columbia's works. Ultimately, Fung had "red flag knowledge" of the infringing activity on his systems, and therefore IsoHunt was held ineligible for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act § 512(c) safe harbor.

<i>UMG Recordings, Inc. v. Shelter Capital Partners LLC</i>

UMG Recordings, Inc. v. Shelter Capital Partners LLC, 667 F.3d 1022 No. 09-55902, was a United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit case in which UMG sued video-sharing website Veoh, alleging that Veoh committed copyright infringement by hosting user-uploaded videos copyrighted by UMG. The Ninth Circuit upheld the decision of the United States District Court for the Central District of California that Veoh is protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's safe harbor provisions. It was established that service providers are "entitled to broad protection against copyright infringement liability so long as they diligently remove infringing material upon notice of infringement".

<i>Wolk v. Kodak Imaging Network, Inc.</i>

Wolk v. Kodak Imaging Network, Inc., 840 F. Supp. 2d 724, was a United States district court case in which the visual artist Sheila Wolk brought suit against Kodak Imaging Network, Inc., Eastman Kodak Company, and Photobucket.com, Inc. for copyright infringement. Users uploaded Wolk's work to Photobucket, a user-generated content provider, which had a revenue sharing agreement with Kodak that permitted users to use Kodak Gallery to commercially print (photofinish) images from Photobucket's site—including unauthorized copies of Wolk's artwork.

Contributory copyright infringement is a way of imposing secondary liability for infringement of a copyright. It is a means by which a person may be held liable for copyright infringement even though he or she did not directly engage in the infringing activity. In the United States, the Copyright Act does not itself impose liability for contributory infringement expressly. It is one of the two forms of secondary liability apart from vicarious liability. Contributory infringement is understood to be a form of infringement in which a person is not directly violating a copyright but, induces or authorises another person to directly infringe the copyright.

References

  1. 1 2 3 In re Aimster Copyright Litigation, 334F.3d643 (7th Cir.2003).
  2. ↑ 17 U.S.C.   § 512(i) .
  3. 1 2 ENotes Website at http://www.enotes.com/topic/In_re_Aimster_Copyright_Litigation
  4. 1 2 In re Aimster Copyright Litigation, 252F. Supp. 2d634 (N.D. Ill.2002).
  5. ↑ Sony Revisited: A new look at contributory copyright infringement, Lee A. Hollaar, University of Utah, 2004 http://digital-law-online.info/papers/lah/sony-revisited-june6.pdf
  6. 1 2 3 Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. , 464 U.S. 417 (1984).
  7. ↑ United States Supreme Court to Review Ninth Circuit Peer-to-Peer Decision http://merlin.obs.coe.int/iris/2005/2/article37.en.html
  8. ↑ Casella v. Morris, 820F.2d362 (11th Cir.1987).
  9. ↑ Louis Vuitton S.A. v. Lee, 875F.2d584 , 590(7th Cir.1989).
  10. ↑ A & M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc. , 239F.3d1004 (9th Cir.2001).
  11. ↑ Richard Posner's Profile at University of Chicago Law School
  1. ↑ Deep v. Recording Industry Association of America, Inc., 555 U.S. 1126 (2009).
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