Ellison v. Robertson
From Internet Law Treatise
Ellison v. Robertson, 189 F. Supp. 2d 1051 (C.D. Cal. 2002)
On a motion for summary judgment, the court disposed of a direct vicarious infringement claim against AOL for copyrighted material posted on Usenet because AOL was only a “passive provider of Usenet access to AOL users.” Id. at 1056. The court denied summary judgment on the claim of contributory infringement, as a reasonable trier of fact could conclude that AOL had reason to know the infringing works were stored on their servers, and could conclude that AOL materially contributed to infringement by storing infringing copies and providing access to those copies. The court found that AOL’s storage of infringing material on its Usenet servers for fourteen days in order to provide Usenet access to its users qualifies the material as “transitory digital network communications” under Section 512(a) of the DMCA.
Ellison v. Robertson, 357 F.3d 1072 (9th Cir. 2004)
The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's grants of summary judgment on the vicarious infringement claim and denial on the contributory infringement claim. The district court erred in concluding on summary judgment that AOL qualifies under the DMCA Section 512(a) safe harbor limitations. The circuit court held there was a genuine issue of material fact as to whether AOL "reasonably implemented" a policy against repeat infringers, because the record suggests they did not have an adequate notification system in place. AOL had changed its email address to which infringement notifications were supposed to be sent, and failed to forward messages sent to the old address to the new account.
