Internet Association Criticizes 'Concerning' Proposals To Amend DMCA Section 512

The Internet Association opposed what it called “concerning ideas” for revamping the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Section 512, which includes DMCA safe harbor provisions and the framework for the notice-and-takedown system. Some proposals made during Copyright Office roundtables last month on its study of Section 512 and through other venues have common themes, many of which involved "forcing internet companies to police the web,” the association said in a Tuesday blog post. It said such proposals would “endanger user speech online” and would “be a huge barrier for creative, growing internet companies to actually introduce new, legal online platforms and functions.” Almost 200 recording artists and music industry entities have an advertising campaign urging Congress to enact a DMCA revamp to rein in association member Google and other internet companies (see 1606200047). The Internet Association singled out several “short-sighted” proposals, including “notice and staydown” proposals that would require companies to keep infringing content offline once it’s identified through a takedown notice. A requirement to “staydown” would force platforms “to monitor the web for reappearing content (that is accused of be infringing), all without the knowledge of when licensing deals have changed and without regard for fair use or other instances of legal content use,” the association said. Proposals to block a platform from receiving Section 512 safe harbor protections if it has general knowledge of infringement occurring are particularly vague, and “because the legal protections are so important to companies just to exist in the first place, companies would be thrown into a world of uncertainty where they’d be forced to monitor content just in case something might be infringing -- and potentially block it without certainty,” the association said. It criticized proposals to implement strict repeat infringement policies: “Blind termination requirements create tunnel vision that ignores huge parts of copyright law, and creates incentives for litigation over legal creativity.”