Court’s Ruling in Yout v. RIAA Imperils Software Innovation: GitHub

The district court’s erroneous finding that Yout’s software platform was a circumvention tool under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (see 2302030005) “threatens the collaborative environment on which technological progress depends,” said Microsoft-affiliated GitHub in a 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals amicus brief Thursday (docket 22-2760).

Yout sued the Recording Industry Association of America for a declaratory judgment that its software platform wasn't a circumvention tool under Section 1201 of the DMCA. Yout is appealing the U.S. District Court for Connecticut’s granting of RIAA’s motion to dismiss. It says the “improper” anticircumvention notices RIAA and its member labels sent Google “falsely caused third parties to believe Yout engaged and continues to engage in illegal and unlawful conduct.”

GitHub takes no position on the outcome of the 2nd Circuit appeal, said its brief. But as the world’s largest online software development platform, GitHub believes the law should encourage “developer curiosity, which is central to innovation and yields some of the world’s most useful open source software,” it said.

GitHub “has a strong interest in advocating for clear legal rules that support software innovation and do not imperil conduct widely considered to be permissible and beneficial,” said the brief. The district court’s reasoning “is inconsistent with those principles,” it said. “It leaves developers with inadequate guidance.”

The district court's "expansive interpretation" of the DMCA's Section 1201 "compels GitHub to point out how the court's rationale needlessly threatens countless other software tools in widespread use," said the brief. Developers routinely design software "that allows users to experience content in new and value-enhancing ways without express permission from a copyright owner," it said.

By interpreting the DMCA in a way that “conflates” measures controlling access to a work with measures controlling use of a work that is already publicly accessible, the district court’s ruling “threatens to imperil the software developers who create those tools,” said GitHub. Its decision risks “ensnaring legitimate software within the DMCA’s reach and chilling technological innovation,” it said. The 2nd Circuit “should reject the district court’s flawed interpretation,” it said.

The district court said Yout violates the DMCA by enabling users to download YouTube’s publicly available videos, said the brief. In the lower court’s view, said GitHub, ordinary users wouldn't download YouTube content without the Yout software, only because YouTube’s user interface lacks a download button.

That reasoning “cannot be sustained,” said GitHub. A software tool doesn't violate the DMCA’s anticircumvention provision “simply because it allows users to experience content differently once the publisher makes its content available to the public,” said the brief. The district court’s holding “ignores settled legal principles and casts doubt on a broad array of beneficial and widely adopted software tools.”