Active Inducement in the Post-'Grokster' World
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WWW. NYLJ.COM ©2010 ALM TUESDAY, MARCH 9, 2010 TECHNOLOGY LAW Active Inducement In the Post-‘Grokster’ World ven as worldwide sales of compact discs infringing use.” In the end, the Court fashioned an have declined 30 percent during the last “active inducement” rule for copyright, relying on six years, legal music downloading con- common-law principles and the active inducement tinues to grow. For example, digital music rule in Patent Law, codified at 35 USC §271(b). retailer eMusic has sold more than 300 Generally speaking, in the file-sharing arena, Emillion downloads and this year, Apple’s iTunes active inducement is the distribution of software Store sold its 10 billionth song download since “with the object of promoting its use to infringe its service began. copyright, as shown by clear expression or other Yet, the International Federation of the Phono- By And affirmative steps taken to foster infringement.” Richard Peter graphic Industry estimates that illegal transfers Raysman Brown Grokster, 545 U.S. at 936-37. still account for approximately 95 percent of all Inducement liability goes beyond encourag- music downloaded, resulting in no payments for U.S. and foreign legal decisions and developments ing a particular consumer to infringe a holder’s musical artists or recording companies. impacting copyright holders, file-sharing networks copyrights, such that the distribution of a prod- In fact, peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks and Internet service providers. uct can itself give rise to liability where evidence remain a concern for the music labels, movie ‘Grokster’ shows the distributor intended and encouraged studios and software makers whose content is the product to be used for infringement. copied and distributed online without authoriza- MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., 545 U.S. 913 Such evidence might include, among other tion as well as for ISPs managing network traf- (2005), involved consolidated cases brought by things, targeted advertising to potential infringers, fic and infrastructure costs. Moreover, today’s a coalition of music publishers, songwriters and a lack of effort to install filtering tools or employ popular file-sharing technologies, namely, the other methods to stem infringement, and a busi- BitTorrent protocol, permit swifter downloads ness model built to foster high-volume infringe- than in the past. ment. In response, copyright holders have sought to Following the Supreme Court’s decision, curb illegal file-sharing through various methods, Grokster was shuttered, and in the subse- including legal action. In 2005, copyright holders quent fallout, countless other file-sharing sites achieved a notable victory in the U.S. Supreme closed. In addition, other music sites retooled Court against the file-sharing network Grokster, and changed their business models to become with the Court importing the patent law concept of legitimate subscription Web sites through active inducement of infringement into copyright K licensing deals with the major recording law. studios. STOC i Over the past year, courts have issued several For example, Napster, one of the first major major rulings concerning file-sharing networks, P2P file-sharing networks and the subject of both in this country and abroad. motion picture studios against Grokster and oth- its own newsworthy litigation within the Ninth This article discusses the theory of active ers. The issue before the Court was the legality of Circuit, reconfigured itself as a monthly digital inducement in copyright law, the evolution of the use of P2P file-sharing software enabling users music subscription service that also offers the P2P technology over the past decade, and recent to easily exchange digital music, videos and soft- ability to purchase legal downloads. However, ware files over the Internet “on a gigantic scale,” even though the number of licensed music ser- without the use of a centralized server. vices has increased from 50 to 400 in the last five RICHARD RAYSMAN, a partner at Holland & Knight, and In rendering its decision, the Supreme Court years and record companies have sought new PETER BROWN, a partner at Baker Hostetler, are co-authors of “Computer Law: Drafting and Negotiating Forms and was unconcerned with how the technology worked business models, such as entering into deals to Agreements” (Law Journal Press). and whether it was capable of “substantial non- bundle music with mobile devices, digital piracy TUESDAY, MARCH 9, 2010 still remains a growing concern.1 or she can choose to become part of the “swarm” Indeed, as file-sharing technology has evolved, In the late 1990s, Napster operated a peer- and a source for future downloads. site operators have attempted to distinguish their to-peer network with a central “search index” Recent Developments technology from previous file-sharing arrange- that served as its collective directory for the ments, arguing that their sites are merely an files available on the server at any given time. Despite the evolution and decentralization of index of links and do not host any copyrighted To download the files from another user in the the last several years, file-sharing sites have gener- content. Napster network, an individual would search ally not been successful in defending copyright At least one U.S. federal court was unconvinced, the Napster server for the desired file and then infringement lawsuits in the United States. deeming one BitTorrent site nothing more than select it from a list of available users in the For example, in Arista Records LLC v. Usenet. “old wine in a new bottle.”3 network. com, Inc., 633 F.Supp.2d 124 (S.D.N.Y. 2009), a In Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., v. Fung, In contrast, the technology in the Grokster net- district court found that a subscription-based No. 06-05578 (C.D. Cal. Dec. 21, 2009), a California works did not offer central indexing of available global online bulletin board network that hosted district court found that a BitTorrent indexing site files. Rather, an individual would enter a search downloadable text articles and unauthorized cop- that facilitated users’ infringement of copyrighted term and the Grokster software itself would con- ies of music recordings was liable for copyright files and encouraged users to copy and distrib- tact other computers seeking matching files and infringement, despite its claims that its service ute copyrighted music and movie files and whose then the searching user would download directly had substantial non-infringing uses. business model depended on massive infringing from the relevant computer. use was liable for active inducement of copyright Within a modern BitTorrent network, however, infringement. the download process is unique from that of previ- In the face of declining compact disc The court granted summary judgment to the ous systems. Rather than downloading a file from sales and technological advances in peer- copyright holders. In rejecting the defendants’ an individual user, users of a BitTorrent network arguments that the BitTorrent indexing sites did click on a dot-torrent file link, and, at that point, to-peer file distribution, the struggle to not contain copies of the copyrighted musical the downloading of a media work begins simultane- control the distribution of copyrighted works, but merely links to tracker sites that aided ously from various sources around the Web. material over the Internet continues. user downloads, the court concluded that because As described by one California federal district the site’s dot-torrent files automatically caused court, BitTorrent technology involves a multistep The court granted summary judgment to the content files to be downloaded and assembled process: music recording company plaintiffs on their direct, on users’ computers, the act of downloading • A user must first install a client application contributory and vicarious copyright infringement dot-torrent files constituted actual copyright to facilitate the transfer of the file to the user’s claims, rejecting the defendant’s argument that infringement. computer. it was merely a “passive conduit” facilitating the The court reasoned that once that dot-torrent • The user then visits a BitTorrent indexing exchange of content between users. file triggers the process of downloading a con- site, which collects and indexes dot-torrent files Comparing this case to Grokster, the court tent file, copyright infringement has taken place- that point to downloadable media or software found the record was replete with instances of to conclude otherwise would “elevate form over files, including popular copyrighted works. The the defendant specifically engendering copyright substance.” dot-torrent files on the site do not contain the infringement and targeting infringement-minded As to active inducement, the court determined actual movie, music or software file; instead, the users to become subscribers of its service, thereby that evidence of the defendants’ intent to induce files contain the data used by the BitTorrent cli- facilitating a “staggering scale of infringement.” infringement was “overwhelming”: the defendant ent to retrieve the content through a peer-to-peer Among other theories, the court held the Fung made statements on his site encouraging or transfer, including “hash” values that are used to defendant liable for inducement of infringement assisting infringement; site moderators directly identify the various pieces of the content file and because the defendant openly and affirmatively assisted