Source: http://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/intellectual-property/b/copyright-trademark-law-blog/archive/2012/04/30/can-content-owners-pin-infringement-on-pinterest.aspx
Timestamp: 2013-12-11 10:04:00
Document Index: 21979092

Matched Legal Cases: ['§512', '§512', '§512', '§512', '§512', '§512', '§512', '§512']

08:47 AM Author: Henry Z. Horbaczewski
Borchardt, "Pinterest Is a $7.7 Billion Company," Forbes, April 16, 2012, accessed April 17, 2012, http://onforb.es/IQd1UO).
Forbes, based on Pinterest's large and growing usage numbers. Forbes
According to the scoreboard from
Experian Hitwise data from March 2012, Pinterest is the third most popular
social media platform in the United States. It is running close behind Twitter
in the number of total visits. Facebook is the big beast at seven billion total
visits, Twitter while very far behind, is logging 182 million visits. Pinterest
is next with 104 million and gaining quickly.
Last August, Time named Pinterest, still in its infancy,
one of the 50 best websites of 2011. (http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2087815_2088159_2088155,00.html visited on April 17, 2012).
Pinterest describes itself as "a Virtual Pinboard. Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful
things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan
their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes. Best
of all, you can browse pinboards created by other people. Browsing pinboards is
a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your
interests." (http://pinterest.com/about/
visited on April 17, 2102). It operates by allowing users to upload visual
images and others to browse them-in short, file sharing.
In fact, a common description of Pinterest, though one no longer on its site,
is "a content sharing service." Visual images may or may not be worth a
thousand words, or possess charms to sooth
the savage breast, but they are eligible for copyright protection, and it
appears for a cursory perusal of the Pinterest website that many of the
"pinned" images were not original to the pinners. How does this phenomenally
successful file sharing site navigate third parties intellectual property
rights in a post-Grokster (MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd,
545 U.S. 913 (2005)) [enhanced version available to lexis.com subscribers], post-YouTube (Viacom Int'l v. YouTube, Inc., 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 6909 (2d Cir. N.Y. Apr. 5, 2012) [enhanced version available to lexis.com subscribers] world? Is Pinterest's harbor safe in the digital millennium?
Grokster held that "one who distributes a [product] with the object of promoting its use to
infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps
taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement
by third parties." Grokster, 545
U.S. at 919. Pinterest's website states that "Pinterest lets you organize and share all the
beautiful things you find on the web,"(emphasis
supplied) although the following statement appears on a linked page: "Pinterest ('Pinterest') respects the intellectual property rights of
others and expects its users to do the same. It is Pinterest's policy, in
infringing the copyrights or other intellectual property rights of others. In
accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, the text of which
may be found on the U.S. Copyright Office website at http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf,
Pinterest will respond expeditiously to claims of copyright infringement
committed using the Pinterest website (the "Site") that are reported
to Pinterest's Designated Copyright Agent, identified in the sample notice
below." (http://pinterest.com/about/copyright/
visited on April 17, 2012).
Like Grokster, Pinterest has
not employed filtering technology to diminish infringing activity and employs a
business model in which "the commercial sense of
their enterprise turns on high-volume use." Grokster, 545 U.S. at 940. Unlike Grokster, Pinterest does not target known
infringers or provide software to enable infringement. While Grokster issues
are by no means irrelevant to Pinterest's legal position, Grokster concerned infringement-enabling software, not an ISP, and
thus has only tangential relevance to the construction of section 512, serving
more "To swell a
progress, start a scene or two," (T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock), the more germane issues
arising under the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright
Act (17 U.S.C. §512) as recently construed by the Second Circuit
in Viacom Int'l v. YouTube. To the extent that section 512 does not
apply, a challenge to the Pinterest model could mean a reprise for Netcom [Religious Technology Center v. Netcom Online Communications Services,
Inc., 907 F. Supp. 1361 (N. D. Cal.
1995) [enhanced version available to lexis.com subscribers],
particularly as to the assertion of a fair use defense.
Section 512(c)(1) provides that "A service provider shall not be liable for
monetary relief, or, except as provided in subsection (j), for injunctive or
other equitable relief, for infringement of copyright by reason of the storage
at the direction of a user of material that resides on a system or network
controlled or operated by or for the service provider, if the service provider-
(A) (i) does not have actual knowledge that the material or an activity using
the material on the system or network is infringing; (ii) in the absence of such actual knowledge, is not aware of facts or
circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent; or (iii) upon obtaining such knowledge or awareness, acts expeditiously to
remove, or disable access to, the material; (B) does not receive a financial benefit directly attributable to the
ability to control such activity; and (C) upon notification of claimed infringement..., responds expeditiously to
remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing or
to be the subject of infringing activity."
clearly attempted to bring itself within the section 512(c) safe harbor, and
its position is comparable to that of Veoh Networks', blessed by the Ninth
Circuit in UMG Recording, Inc. v. Veoh Networks, Inc., 667 F. 3d 1022
(9th Cir. 2011) [enhanced version available to lexis.com subscribers]. The Veoh
Court ruled that "[m]erely hosting a category of copyrightable content...with the
material is insufficient to meet the actual knowledge requirement under
§512(c)(1)(A)(1). We reach the same conclusion with regard to the
§512(c)(1)(A)(ii) inquiry [the red flag test] as to whether a service provider
'is aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent
[667 F. 3d at 1038]....[A] service provider must be aware of specific infringing material to have the ability to control the
infringing material within the meaning of §512(c)(1)(B). Only then would its
failure to exercise its ability to control deny it a safe harbor." 667 F. 3d at
1042 (emphasis supplied).
infringement calculus became considerably more interesting on April 5, when the
Second Circuit issued its opinion in Viacom, differently construing the
section 512(c) safe harbor requirements. The Court first took up the issue (a
non-issue, according to the Veoh court) of the interplay between the
actual knowledge requirement and the red flag test: "The difference
between actual and red flag knowledge is thus specific and generalized
knowledge, but instead between a subjective and objective standard. In other
words, the actual knowledge provision turns on whether the provider actually or
'subjectively' knew of specific infringement, while the red flag provision
turns on whether the provider was subjectively aware of facts that would have
made the specific infringement 'objectively' obvious to a reasonable person.
The red flag provision, because it incorporates an objective standard, is not
swallowed up by the actual knowledge provision under our construction of the
§512(c) safe harbor. Both provisions do independent work, and both apply only
to specific instances of infringement." Viacom,
2012 U.S. App. LEXIS at 28. The Court then added another layer of complexity,
importing the common law willful blindness doctrine to the DMCA safe harbor:
"DMCA safe harbor protection cannot be conditioned on affirmative monitoring by
a service provider. For that reason, §512(m) is incompatible with a broad
common law duty to monitor or otherwise seek out infringing activity based on
general awareness that infringement may be occurring. That fact does not,
however, dispose of the abrogation inquiry [i.e., whether the common law
doctrine was abrogated by the DMCA]; as previously noted, willful blindness
cannot be defined as an affirmative duty to monitor. See [United
States v.] Aina-Marshall, 336 F. 3d [167] at 170 [2d Circuit 2003] [enhanced version available to lexis.com subscribers] (holding that a person is
'willfully blind' where he 'was aware of a high probability of the fact in
dispute and consciously avoided confirming that fact'). Because the statute
does not 'speak[] directly to the willful blindness doctrine, §512(m)
limits-but does not abrogate-the doctrine. Accordingly, we hold that the
willful blindness doctrine may be applied, in appropriate circumstances, to
demonstrate knowledge or awareness of specific circumstances of infringement
under the DMCA [2012 U.S. App. LEXIS at 39]....Accordingly, we conclude that the
'right and ability to control' infringing activity under §512(c)(1)(B)
'requires something more [emphasis supplied] than the ability to remove
or block access to materials posted on a service provider's website'....The remaining-and
more difficult-question is how to define the 'something more' that is
required." 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS at 47. Unfortunately for people who have to
plan how to run a business, that remaining-and more difficult-question was
remanded to the District Court for an answer. Perhaps the test is simply
whether the alleged infringer had specific knowledge of, and disregarded, a
pattern of infringement encompassing the specific act at issue, even if it did
not possess specific knowledge of the individual act of infringement as the Veoh court would require.
Pinterest's knowledge, awareness or lack thereof is also colored by the
fair use defense-not merely the somewhat shopworn Perfect 10 rule (Perfect
10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., 508 F. 3d 1146 (9th Circuit 2007) [enhanced version available to lexis.com subscribers]; Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corporation, 280
F. 3d 934 (9th Cir. 2002) [enhanced version available to lexis.com subscribers])-but the rather different and more
interesting ones: is the way images are "pinned" on the site sufficiently
transformative, and the effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value
of, copyrighted works pinned on the site sufficiently limited to tip the fourth
fair use factor in favor of Pinterest? The Netcom
decision may well provide useful guidance on those issues. See Netcom,
907 F. Supp. at 1378-1382.
The difference between the Veoh and Viacom standards implicates significant economic interests, not
only those of Pinterest and its investors and its growing collection of commercial relationships. Facebook, having acquired Instagram for a billion dollars, is no
doubt studying Pinterest's situation with more than spectatorial interests, as
well as a thousand techies in a thousand garages racing to develop the next
generation, killer photo sharing app. For copyright lawyers, it is reassurance that the Golan
decision (Golan v. Holder, 132 S. Ct. 873; 2012 U.S. LEXIS 907 [enhanced version available to lexis.com subscribers]) and the defeat of SOPA do not represent the end of
history, and, at least until the remaining-and more difficult-questions are
resolved, copyright law will retain its seat at the high stakes table.
04-30-2012 Pinterest does provide its users with software to enable copyright infringement. It's called the pinmarklet - a one-click copyright infringement tool.
04-30-2012 They need to implement an image “fingerprinting” scheme like Youtube does with video and sound. Once an image is taken down, nobody could pin the same image again even if it was resized or cropped.
They should allow photographers to enter their photos’ fingerprints in the database before infringement occurs. Make a desktop or web application. Have it resize large photos before uploading to server. Server processes the photos and keeps their fingerprint in its database. Server throws away the photos and never uses them afterwards.
Set the system up not to be extremely strict on matches and they’d still stop most of them. They could have a human review false positives before they showed on the site. It’s cheap to hire labor overseas to do tasks like that.