Source: https://www.commlawblog.com/2018/08/articles/intellectual-property/copyright-enters-the-twilight-zone-a-series-of-controversial-decisions-may-not-be-all-that-they-seem-part-one/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 21:06:10+00:00

Document:
Picture for a moment a man. Not an ordinary man by any stretch. This man is Tom Brady. Quarterback. Five- time Super Bowl winner. Future Hall of Famer. Husband to a Supermodel. And from all appearances, a good father, and overall a decent person.
Yet this man has a way of courting controversy at all turns. Not drafted until the sixth round, he quickly supplants Drew Bledsoe, a man who many thought would be the future of the New England Patriots, as the team’s quarterback. He succeeds; perhaps too well, as the Patriots become the Evil Empire of the NFL over the past two decades. Yes, Bill Belichick is the lightning rod for most of opposing fans’ ire, but Brady has his haters too. Let’s not forget a little thing called “Deflategate.” Or his statement that his rigid workout regimens and strict (and somewhat quirky) dietary restrictions would allow him to play well into his forties – and keep him eternally young and handsome.
For all these reasons – the fact that he’s apparently found the Fountain of Youth, the on and off field success, the polarizing figure he’s become – it is really easy to picture Tom Brady. The world is filled with pictures of Tom Brady. And one of those pictures has now become extremely controversial in a legal sense.
Which brings us to the heart of the matter – a February 15 decision by Judge Katherine Forrest in Goldman v. Breitbart, News Network LLC. The scene is the Hamptons, July 2, 2016. Tom Brady is seen with Danny Ainge, the general manager and President of the Boston Celtics. They are assumed to be there as part of the Celtics’ pitch to Kevin Durant, the most sought after free agent in the NBA that summer. Another man – this one an ordinary man who goes by the name of Justin Goldman – takes a photo of Brady and uploads it to his Snapchat Story. In 24 hours, that would generally be the end of the story, as the photo would disappear from that platform. But, as a photo of Tom Brady in the Hamptons just as the Celtics are believed to be wooing Kevin Durant will do, this photo goes viral and eventually ends up being uploaded to Twitter by several different people.
Several prominent news outlets, including, among others, Time, Inc (owner of Sports Illustrated), Yahoo, Vox, Gannett, the Boston Globe, NESN, and Breitbart News “embed” the Tweets into their online stories about a possible Celtics-Durant connection.
In this case, none of the defendants – according to Judge Forrest – actually copied and pasted the photo onto their own servers for display on their websites; instead, they follow the now-common practice of embedding content under a process allowed by the platform on which that content is found. Embedding is prevalent today because it is so easy to do and, until now, widely believed to be legal. The user simply needs to add a specific “embed code” to the HTML instructions when seeking to include a certain piece of content in a story. The underlying content – in this case the Tweet containing a picture of Tom Brady and Danny Ainge – remains on the original server – in this case, Twitter – even as it appears on the user’s website.
The Server Test stands in stark contrast to the “Incorporation Test,” a test that had been proposed by the plaintiffs in Perfect 10 and that would define display as “the act of incorporating content into a webpage that is then pulled up by the browser.” The Incorporation Test generally favors copyright owners, as under that test, incorporating content into your website would mean that your website is actually displaying the content in question. The Server Test, by contrast, takes the view that the material is still being displayed solely from the server on which it resides.
In sum, this Court is aware of only three decisions outside of the Ninth Circuit considering the display right in light of Perfect 10; one from the Seventh Circuit which adopted the Server Test for contributory liability, one from the Southern District which stated as a factual matter only that Perfect 10 existed, and one from the Northern District of Texas rejecting Perfect 10.
Nowhere does the Copyright Act suggest that possession of an image is necessary in order to display it. Indeed, the purpose and language of the Act support the opposite view. The definitions in § 101 are illuminating. First, to display a work publicly means “to transmit…a…display of the work…by means of any device or process.”17 USC § 101. To transmit a display is to “communicate it by any device or process whereby images or sounds are received beyond the place from which they are sent.” Id. (emphasis added). Devices and processes are further defined to mean ones “now known or later developed.” Id.
This rocked the journalism world in particular because embedding has become so commonplace. In fact, when this decision was first issued in February, I shared the defendants’ and amici’s view that “not adopting the Server Test would ‘radically change linking practices, and thereby transform the Internet as we know it.’” After all, I’m firmly on team journalism and know this will have a distinct impact on the ability to easily incorporate important content into publications.
That’s why it’s a good thing I’ve waited until now to write about this case. Though I could claim it was due to just being too busy at the time, the delay was really due to: 1) the fact that I thought the case would quickly be overturned on appeal and 2) my gnawing feeling that this may be the right result.
I’m writing now because on July 17, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit declined to overturn Judge Forrester’s decision via “interlocutory appeal” (in which an overarching issue is appealed before the case is fully decided), calling an immediate appeal “unwarranted.” The effect of that ruling is that, at least for the time being, it will be riskier in the Southern District of New York for online publishers to embed copyrighted content into their web pages.
I’m also writing now because I’ve come full circle as to my view of this result. That’s part of the reason for my Twilight Zone-themed introduction: after a bizarre decision from a federal court that turns a seemingly accepted practice with regard to using photos inside out, I think I’m beginning to understand and agree with this decision. I’m not even sure I know what’s real anymore.
Among those defenses are: 1) whether the photo was effectively released into the public domain; 2) potential claims of licensing and authorization; 3) a defense under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act; 4) limitations on damages due to innocent infringement; and 5) fair use.
It’s this last claim that is the most intriguing, relevant, and heartening, as the breadth of the fair use doctrine seems to have increased over the past several years. This is particularly true for the Second Circuit, which seems to have taken the lead on the concept of “Transformative Fair Use” (largely traced back to the opinion of former Supreme Court Justice David Souter in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. in which Judge Souter looked at “whether the new work merely supersedes the objects of the original creation, or whether and to what extent it is ‘transformative,’ altering the original with new expression, meaning, or message”). But it’s also true elsewhere, as evidenced by two recent decisions – albeit from a different jurisdiction – that were similarly noteworthy to those who pay attention to such things. Both cases, decided this year within the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, adopt an expansive view of fair use to the point where they could offset the effect of Goldman v. Breitbart. These cases are Philpot v. Media Research Center Inc. and Brammer v. Violent Hues Productions, LLC.
The Server Test has always been problematic because it creates both a perverse incentive and a bunch of possible unpleasant follow-on effects based on how the web works. Any image on this webpage isn’t part of the purely textual webpage returned when someone first opens this article. Instead, all the visible images are listed in that returned text (or subsequent returned items) and then the browser goes and gets them and slots them into the correct space.
So when this page displays that big C image up there, it’s actually pulling https://www.commlawblog.com/files/2011/05/copyright-symbol-2.jpg and popping it in. And there’s nothing stopping me from writing a webpage somewhere else and putting that link in on my page. So I didn’t “copy” the image, I just “deep linked” (to use the terminology from cases the EFF participated in many years ago) to it. But if that image belongs to FHH maybe they don’t want me to use it on my article about [made up offensive thing that starts with C] and would like to assert their control.
But of course, is it solely on them? If they display this image, hosted on the FHH server, in a state where said item is obscene, who’s the violator? The person showing the image which the server test says isn’t an infringement? Or the person hosting the image who by that logic is actually still in complete control of it?

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