Arizona Attorney - March 2013

Pinterest and User-Generated Content

Website Liability for Online Copyright Infringement ONLINE LAW

BY CONNIE J. MABLESON

The website Pinterest self-proclaims that it “is an online pinboard” where people can “organize and share things you love.” 1 It has gained widespread popularity despite being a repository for photographs and pictures legally and illegally copied from the Internet and posted to the site by its users. When users upload or post content to a website such as Pinterest, the site may be liable for contributory copyright infringement. Over the last 20 years, there have been many famous cases involving the liability of websites for copyright infringement as a result of a user posting music and movies and other infringing content. 2

Since 1998, websites can avoid mone-
tary liability for contributory copyright
infringement if the site strictly complies with
the provisions of the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act of 1998 (“DMCA”). 3 The
DMCA is intended to immunize “online
service providers” including websites from
monetary liability when the online service
provider transmits, caches, stores or indexes
infringing UGC on or through its servers,
system, network or website (online service
providers and websites are referred to col-
lectively in this article as “ISPs”). 4 This arti-
cle outlines the steps the ISP must take to
avoid monetary liability for contributory
copyright infringement under the DMCA.

a website by users. 5 The problematic UGC is content that is protected by copyright law and that is uploaded or posted by a user without the permission of the author. Copyright law protects “original works of authorship” that are fixed in a tangible form of expression. 6 Content that qualifies for copyright expression can be roughly broken down into four categories: text and literary works; photographs and works of visual arts; audiovisual works and films; and music compositions and sound recordings. 7

What is UGC?

User generated content (“UGC”) may be described as content uploaded or posted to

INTERNET

1993

Copyright Infringement—Direct and Contributory An author of a work protected by copyright law is generally the owner of the work. 8 The copyright arises at the moment when the author fixes the work in a perceivable format for the first time. 9 A work that is original and fixed in tangible form is automatically protected from the moment of its fixation and is given a term enduring for the author’s life plus an additional 70 years after the author’s death. 10 Copyright law gives the author of the work (or the

• The Mosaic Web Browser is released as an interface to the Web. The development
of Mosaic was funded as a result of the HPCA – Gore Bill). The browser was devel-
oped further as “Netscape Navigator.”
• InterNIC is created by NSF to provide specific Internet services.