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How is Facebook protected from copyright infringement

by ahojvole
6 replies
Hi,

some people claim that copyright infringement of images on the internet could lead to serious financial penalties.
i.e. if you use someones image on your website without authors consent, he could sue you.

How is Facebook and any other major social network protected agains this? I would not be surprised if literally millions of copyrighted images were uploaded to Facebook daily. Yet almost none such images get deleted (unless they break another rule such as pornographic content).

While it is Facebooks policy to only upload images and other contents that belongs to you, reality is rather different. If a user uploads copyrighted image he automatically broke Facebooks rules, but we dont see thousands of Facebook accounts being banned every day do we?

So how exactly is Facebook protected from law suits of this fashion?
#copyright #facebook #infringement #protected
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    • Profile picture of the author Paul Myers
      Note: I am still not a lawyer. [harrumph]

      Facebook is responsible for removing copyrighted images if they receive a DMCA notification. They may be responsible in certain other limited conditions. For the most part, the posters are the ones liable for any infringement from posting copyrighted material.

      That's a tricky thing, though. It's mostly non-commercial use, and proving damages from most of that stuff would be a nightmare. Registered copyrights are easier to litigate, but still a pain for something like posts on a social media site. There's the bad PR, the question of "who actually posted it first," did the added comments qualify it as fair use or satire, blah blah blah.

      The direct answer, though, is that FB isn't generally responsible for what their members post. The members are.
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      • Profile picture of the author ahojvole
        Originally Posted by Paul Myers View Post

        Note: I am still not a lawyer. [harrumph]

        The direct answer, though, is that FB isn't generally responsible for what their members post. The members are.
        I see, therefore a copyright owner could sue that user who posted his copyrighted image and demand financial compensation?

        This makes logical sense, however does it occur in real life does it? We are still considering potentially millions of copyright infringements per day, yet I never heard/read of anyone getting sued for such thing.
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        • Profile picture of the author Paul Myers
          I see, therefore a copyright owner could sue that user who posted his copyrighted image and demand financial compensation?
          Potentially? Yes. Certainly.

          Whether it's likely is a matter of specifics. You'd need to speak to a competent IP attorney for a semi-authoritative opinion. Quite often it would come down to which judge heard the case.

          If you want to read some silly horror stories about lawsuits (and threats thereof) for fan pages and sites, Google for Paramount Studios and copyright infringement.


          Paul
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          • Profile picture of the author ahojvole
            Originally Posted by Paul Myers View Post

            Quite often it would come down to which judge heard the case.
            I have heard this exact same thing from a lawyer some time ago so I guess this is a gray zone.

            Lets say Facebook has the right to blame its users because they are the ones who infringe copyright upon uploading something.
            But what about Google images? I have heard even Google is breaking the law by displaying all images it finds on the internet in their Images section. There must be not millions but billions copyrighted images there.

            I cant image how Google handles this matter?
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            • Profile picture of the author ForumGuru
              Banned
              Originally Posted by ahojvole View Post

              But what about Google images? I have heard even Google is breaking the law by displaying all images it finds on the internet in their Images section. There must be not millions but billions copyrighted images there.

              I cant image how Google handles this matter?
              A famous lawsuit by Perfect 10 against Google has bounced around in the courts for many years. Basically, Google's use has been deemed "transformative" under fair use doctrine and Perfect 10 has never "proved" that the search engine "harmed them irreparably". Perfect 10 spent 7 million bucks in legal fees fighting Google - but so far it has been money wasted. The Supreme Court fairly recently refused to hear the case, and the Perfect 10 founder stated “It's kind of a sad day for copyright holders”. He he also stated that it's very hard for the average person to fight the behemoth. The excerpted story below from Law360.com and the Wikipedia entry below are a pretty good recap.

              (March 05, 2012, 3:05 PM ET) -- The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied adult website operator Perfect 10 Inc.'s bid to revive its copyright infringement suit against Google Inc. that accused the search giant of storing and linking to archived pictures from the adult site. The high court's refusal to hear the suit leaves in place a Ninth Circuit decision from Aug. 3 that Google had safe harbor under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act because Perfect 10 had not shown irreparable harm to its business resulting from the alleged infringement.

              <snip>

              The case goes back to 2004, when Perfect 10 sued Google for allegedly linking to sites that infringed its material and hosting blog sites that posted nude or suggestive pictures of women that were previously published in Perfect 10's magazine. The magazine is now defunct, and Perfect 10 operates as only as a subscription-based website.

              In July 2010, U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz of the Central District of California denied Perfect 10's request for an injunction and granted Google's motion for summary judgment, saying that the search site was protected by the DMCA's safe harbor provisions with regard to the storing of cached images and infringement committed by bloggers.

              Judge Matz ruled that Google did not know about the infringement, did not make money off it and took quick action to correct it.

              Perfect 10 appealed, arguing that availability of its copyrighted images on Google's services destroyed its business because no one would pay for a subscription to the site when its content was available for free. The company claimed that it lost $50 million from 1996 to 2007 and was close to bankruptcy.

              In August, the Ninth Circuit found that even though bankruptcy could be considered irreparable harm, Perfect 10 had not done enough to prove that it had ever been financially sound and the company could not prove that anyone stopped subscribing to its site because the content was available on Google.

              <snip>

              High Court Ends Perfect 10
              This Wikipedia entry outlines the 2007 9th Crcuit decision the above story skips over, which is the the transformative use argument. This decision overturned most of an earlier district court decision that favored Perfect 10.

              Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., 508 F.3d 1146 (9th Cir. 2007) was a case in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit involving Perfect 10, Inc., Amazon.com, Inc. and Google, Inc. The court held that Google's framing and hyperlinking as part of an image search engine constituted a fair use of Perfect 10's images because the use was highly transformative, overturning most of the district court's decision.[1]

              Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
              Regards,

              -don
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