United StatesDigital Millennium Copyright Act, integrity of copyright management information
Area: Scraping law, also in Reuse law.
In force since .
A copyright and text and data mining (TDM) rule binding public and private bodies.
- Obligation class
- Attribution
- Audit expectation
- none
What it requires
- Do not intentionally remove or alter copyright management information, meaning the title, the names of the author and copyright owner, the copyright notice and the terms and conditions for use, on works you copy, unless the copyright owner or the law authorizes it.
- Do not distribute, import for distribution or publicly perform works or copies, or distribute the information itself, knowing that copyright management information has been removed or altered without authority; for works and copies the text also requires that you know, or for civil remedies have reasonable grounds to know, that doing so will induce, enable, facilitate or conceal an infringement.
- Do not provide or distribute false copyright management information with the intent to induce, enable, facilitate or conceal infringement.
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text. Also read by: Stevens v. CoreLogic, Inc., No. 16-56089 (9th Cir. ) (recorded ).
In the frameworks
- NIST AI RMF
- MAP 4.1Approaches for mapping AI technology and legal risks of its components – including the use of third-party data or software – are in place, followed, and documented, as are risks of infringement of a third party’s intellectual property or other rights.
- NIST AI 600-1
- GAI-RISK-10Intellectual Property
- MIT mitigations Draft
- 3.2Data Governance
- FINOS AIGF
- AIR-PREV-007Legal and Contractual Frameworks for AI Systems
- AIR-DET-013Providing Citations and Source Traceability for AI-Generated Information
Our reading of where this law's duties sit in each framework. It never says that running a control meets the law. How we read a framework against the law
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Private right of actionYes
Criminal exposure note
A willful violation for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain is punishable by a fine of up to $500,000 or up to 5 years in prison, or both, for a first offense, and by a fine of up to $1,000,000 or up to 10 years in prison, or both, for a subsequent offense (17 U.S.C. § 1204(a)).
Penalty structure
Criminal fine for a willful violation of section 1202 for commercial advantage or private financial gain: not more than $500,000 for a first offense and not more than $1,000,000 for a subsequent offense (17 U.S.C. 1204(a)); the higher ceiling is recorded. The nonprofit library, archives, educational institution and public broadcasting entity are outside it (1204(b)). The figures are fixed by the statute, not by an inflation-adjusting rule. Private statutory damages are recorded separately.
- Rule
- Fixed only
- As of
- Currency
- USD
- Fixed cap
- 1,000,000
Statutory damages
A complaining party may elect statutory damages for each violation of section 1202 in a sum of not less than $2,500 or more than $25,000 (17 U.S.C. 1203(c)(3)(B)); the court may increase the award up to triple for a repeat violation within 3 years and may reduce or remit it for an innocent violation (1203(c)(4)-(5)). The sums are set by the statute and are not adjusted for inflation by rule.
- As of
- Currency
- USD
- Per person minimum
- 2,500
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
Persons injured by a violation sue in federal district court (17 U.S.C. 1203(a)); a willful violation for commercial advantage or private financial gain is a federal criminal offense under 17 U.S.C. 1204.
Settledness
The Ninth Circuit read the induce, enable, facilitate or conceal element of section 1202(b) to require that the defendant knows or has a reasonable basis to know the act will aid infringement.
- As of
- Case link
- https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-ca9-16-56089/pdf/USCOURTS-ca9-16-56089-1.pdf
- Case citation
- Stevens v. CoreLogic, Inc., No. 16-56089 (9th Cir. )
- Open questions
- Does a person who copies works in bulk with their title, author and terms of use stripped, to train a model, act 'knowing, or ... having reasonable grounds to know, that it will induce, enable, facilitate, or conceal an infringement' under section 1202(b)?
- Does information a website carries as markup or metadata, rather than on the copy itself, count as copyright management information 'conveyed in connection with copies or phonorecords of a work' under section 1202(c)?
What record it asks for
Logging duty
Section 1202 prohibits knowingly providing or distributing false copyright management information and intentionally removing or altering such information. It requires no one to keep a log or record, and the information it protects is the title, author, owner and terms carried with a work, not a record of anyone's activity. The section names no territorial hook.
- Kind
- None
- As of
What this law does
Section 1202(b) prohibits, without the authority of the copyright owner or the law, intentionally removing or altering any copyright management information. It also prohibits distributing or importing for distribution copyright management information, and distributing, importing for distribution or publicly performing works or copies, knowing that the information has been removed or altered without authority.
The paragraph on distributing works or copies whose information has been removed or altered ends with a requirement that the person know, or for civil remedies have reasonable grounds to know, that the act will induce, enable, facilitate, or conceal an infringement. Section 1202(a) prohibits knowingly providing, or distributing or importing for distribution, false copyright management information with the intent to induce, enable, facilitate, or conceal infringement.
Section 1202(c) defines copyright management information as certain information conveyed in connection with copies or performances of a work, and excludes personally identifying information about a user. The definition includes the title and other information identifying the work, the names of the author and the copyright owner, the information on a notice of copyright, and the terms and conditions for use of the work.
Section 1203 lets any person injured by a violation of section 1202 bring a civil action in federal district court. A complaining party may elect statutory damages of not less than $2,500 or more than $25,000 for each violation of section 1202. Section 1204 punishes a willful violation for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain with a fine of not more than $500,000 or imprisonment for not more than 5 years, or both, for a first offense.
The criminal penalty does not apply to a nonprofit library, archives, educational institution, or public broadcasting entity. Section 1202 was added to the Copyright Act on . The effective date of the chapter that contains it is .
How courts have read itPremium data
Our analysis of this law draws on 11 court rulings.
What each ruling held, what it means for an app, and whether it still stands are premium data, in the Plus, Pro and Enterprise plans.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app crawls the web, trains models or reuses other publishers' content.
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us-17-u-s-c-1202 ; DMCA