AfterDawn: News

NFL violates DMCA with takedown notice

The National Football League (NFL) has gotten itself caught up in an online battle over a YouTube clip with Brooklyn Law School professor Wendy Seltzer, and has managed to violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) through its actions. As a lesson to students about how content owners are beginning to exaggerate their rights, Seltzer posted a clip of the NFL's copyright message that aired during the Super Bowl.

"This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience, and any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent is prohibited," the notice read. Just five days after posting the clip on her blog, she received a takedown notice through YouTube, and the clip was removed.



However, Seltzer is also staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the founder of Chilling Effects, a website that educates the public about their rights online. She sent a counter-notification to YouTube which cited Section 512 of the DMCA. It meant that YouTube was compelled to replace the material on receiving a counter notification asserting "good faith belief" that the material removal was a mistake.

After several weeks, the video appeared again on YouTube as a result. However, the NFL then made the mistake of sending another takedown notice and getting it removed from YouTube once again. Since Seltzer's counter-notification described her use of the clip as fair use, being an "an educational excerpt featuring the NFL's overreaching copyright warning aired during the Super Bowl", the NFL's only option to force the removal of the video would be through court proceedings.

After receiving her counter notification that claimed fair use rights, DMCA Section 512 considers sending another takedown notice over the same content as a knowing misrepresentation that the clip is infringing. This would make the NFL liable for all legal fees incurred by the alleged infringer, and also damages. Seltzer seems to determined to keep pushing back on the issue, maybe even until it goes to court, in which case, the court would more than likely agree with Seltzer. That could change the policies of content providers who bombard sites like YouTube with takedown notices.

Source:
Ars Technica

Written by: James Delahunty @ 23 Mar 2007 0:46

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• 13 comments

• tefarko

  Quote: ... the NFL then made the mistake... I guess NFL´s top-hats don´t know anything about laws or court procedures... isn´t about time to make stupid lawyers liable for their mistakes?... this would certainly stop with the useless law suits...

  23.3.2007 04:42 #1

• spydah

  I agree 100%. I think thats pretty stupid on their part. Big Business is so damn sensitive these days and so hard up on trying to sue or intimidate people its crazy. They really need to get over their self and stop looking to get over for reasons that arent that serious. I could see if somebody was airing a superbowl or some other NFL related game before they did.

  23.3.2007 04:55 #2

• aalucard1

  Ok my question is...if the NFL is demanding that this be taken down...then why are they not demanding that copies of the infamous Janet Jackson halftime show be removed from legal sites as well?? I mean that was placed on YouTube and seen by millions, yet you never heard a peep about it from the NFL. If not, then why not?

  23.3.2007 05:38 #3

• georgeluv

  all this bitch did was counter a takedown notice wich forces the quandry to court, the nfl didnt know that aprently, and who would? the dmca is 60 pages long!

  23.3.2007 05:59 #4

• Dela

  bitch?

  23.3.2007 06:13 #5

• MrGrimace

  Quote:all this bitch did was counter a takedown notice wich forces the quandry to court, the nfl didnt know that aprently, and who would? the dmca is 60 pages long!As the RIAA, MPAA, NFL, (insert another acronym) would say if the situation was reversed: "Ignorance of the law is not an excuse to break it!" The NFL was at fault, and by their own standards they should pay for it.

  23.3.2007 06:14 #6

• spydah

  Quote:[quote]all this bitch did was counter a takedown notice wich forces the quandry to court, the nfl didnt know that aprently, and who would? the dmca is 60 pages long!As the RIAA, MPAA, NFL, (insert another acronym) would say if the situation was reversed: "Ignorance of the law is not an excuse to break it!" The NFL was at fault, and by their own standards they should pay for it.[/quote]
  Well put man.

  23.3.2007 09:07 #7

• aalucard1

  Originally posted by georgeluv:all this bitch did was counter a takedown notice wich forces the quandry to court, the nfl didnt know that aprently, and who would? the dmca is 60 pages long!Jeeze Mr georgeluv, then just because it is sixty pages long, I guess actually READING it would be out of the question? Or isnt this what the NFL pays the attorneys for?
  
  Some people should never be allowed to have a computer or an internet connection, and georgeluv is living proof.
  
  Oh and george? next time you want to post, make sure you have a dictionary or a spell checker as it seems english is not even your third language...let alone your first or second one.

  23.3.2007 10:08 #8

• wasprider

  http://libertysflame.com/cgi-bin/readart...=3460&Disp=3#C3
  
  Here's my basis for opposing copyrights:
  
  Source: http://date-dabitur.com/? p=57
  
  Ideas like this from Thomas Jefferson, an old-school agrarian, make some people mad:
  
  If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
  
  The idea of patent rights and intellectual property was discussed among the Federalists. James Madison is the one who argued for a clause in the Constitution to protect these things, but even they made no claims that ideas could be properly considered “property”. Madison and others simply believed that it was in the best interests of the country to give some extra incentive to stimulate progress. [Beware of governments attempting to stimulate progress] Jefferson said that might possibly be true, but he had seen no evidence of it. He said that he would agree to a limited protection of copyrights, but only if for an expressly stated period of time after which the works would enter the public domain. He feared that even this would lead to government controlled monopolies and the restriction of the flow of ideas, and that it would mushroom into protections for other types of ideas. He was right. Nowadays we even have lawsuits filed by dance choreographers alleging that someone “stole” their dance steps.
  
  Here’s another quote that will irritate the defenders of the restriction of liberty through un-Biblical intellectual property laws:
  
  The general rule of law is, that noblest of human productions— knowledge, truths, and ideas—become, after voluntary communication to others, free as the air to common use.” Justice Louis Brandeis, 1918
  
  "If I thought this war was to abolish slavery, I would resign my commission, and offer my sword to the other side." --Ulysses S. Grant
  
  cwrwinger posted on 2007-03-23 18:19:23 ET Reply Trace Private Reply Edit

  23.3.2007 14:22 #9

• Unfocused

  Well, that is two big companies in 1 week that seemed to have "stumbled" over themselves and the law. Good for them. I hope that the courts handle these issues accordingly and don’t just sweep it under the rug.
  
  I recall somebody once saying that being the prince is better because everybody is always trying to kill the king. When are these companies going to recognize that and be content with all of the money that they already have?

  23.3.2007 17:33 #10

• duckNrun

  Georgeluv:
  
  All this WOMAN, ATTORNEY, PERSON, PROFESSOR (any other choice of pronouns would have been more appropriate and insightful) did was to enforce her rights, my rights, and YOUR rights as well.
  
  These companies pay MANY lawyers a TON OF MONEY. Chances are that they KNEW they were in violation but didn't realize who was at the other end of the line. Probably suspecting the usual suspects of teens, college kids and people who cannot DEFEND THEMSELVES these lawyers (whom you should have called the nasty names) willfully violated the law over something as ridiculous as a COPY of a copyright notice!
  
  They should get what they deserve and honestly, your post should get what it deserves!

  23.3.2007 20:53 #11

• Lp531

  georgeluv's not the sharpest tool in the shed...
  Ran into him here...
  http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/452428
  Some people never learn...

  23.3.2007 22:46 #12

• duckNrun

  funny link. I lol at the 'moderators read and if they didnt like it theyd say somet' dollow up with a moderator post 'edit it' lol
  
  i needed the laugh ty :-)

  23.3.2007 23:20 #13