Much has changed since the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was passed under President Clinton in 1998. That law was designed primarily around the issues regulating online music distribution, but it has become a minefield for website owners and operators hosting all types of media.
One notable example is the lawsuit, recently filed by YouTube against one of its users who was extorting other users by exerting false copyright claims. In multiple instances he would demand a payment or threaten to file a further claim against the target, which would be grounds to have them removed from the video platform.
Since YouTube doesn’t do a very good job of vetting these claims (nor do many others), and we all want to avoid fines, legal battles, and the kind of headaches that sometimes come with having an online presence, here are a few suggestions to help protect you.
The simplest advice is to make sure you are not violating someone’s copyright. This may not be as easy to determine as it sounds, so the following are ways in which you can legally reuse someone else’s copyrighted content without infringing their rights:
- If it’s in the “public domain”
If the copyright has expired, was not properly renewed, or the work was not a type of product that is copyrightable, these are all ways it may be considered public domain (owned by the public). An owner may also officially dedicate it to the public domain. - By permission
How you get the permission varies by source and medium, however a good place to start is the Copyright Clearance Center, or by directly contacting the work’s owner, if possible. - The Fair Use Doctrine
There’s a lot of gray area in the Fair Use Doctrine, but it generally boils down to educational, nonprofit, or editorial use (such as commentary or parody). If you quote someone in your blog, just make sure you don’t reproduce their entire work, or claim the excerpt as your own.
Stanford’s Online Reference Library is a great resource for keeping up to date on copyright law.
A final word on the DMCA (the law that created the copyright claim abuse YouTube is seeking to remedy in its lawsuit). If you get a “Takedown Notice” through your service provider or from a purported copyright owner, you can file a counter-claim if you believe you are not in violation. Further if you do end up in court and can show that your infringement was not intentional, judges tend to favor such arguments.