Kodak, Photobucket Defeat Artist's Copyright Lawsuit

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A federal judge has ruled in favor of Photobucket and Kodak in a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by the artist Sheila Wolk.

Wolk alleged that Photobucket infringed her copyright by hosting pictures of her art that were uploaded by other users. The artist also alleged that Kodak infringed her copyright by making prints of those same photos.

But U.S. District Court Judge Robert Sweet in New York ruled that Kodak and Photobucket were not liable.

In an opinion issued last week, Sweet said that Photobucket was protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's “safe harbor” provisions. The safe harbors generally provide that file-sharing sites are not liable when users upload infringing material, as long as the sites remove the content upon request.

Photobucket took down images at specific URLs in response to Wolk's complaints, but she argued that the service should have removed all images of her art -- even where she had not provided the URLs. Sweet said Photobucket wasn't obligated to do so.

“Although Wolk advocates for a system where one notice of infringement would apply to all instances of that image appearing on the website, it would be irresponsible for Photobucket to assume infringement in the way the plaintiff describes,” he wrote. “Because Wolk and other copyright holders retain the right to license their work, a policy under which Photobucket assumes infringement could result in Photobucket unlawfully blocking others from uploading images to which they hold valid licenses."

Sweet's decision draws on rulings in other high-profile cases, including Viacom's infringement lawsuit against Google's YouTube and Universal's case against Veoh. YouTube and Veoh prevailed in those cases after judges ruled that the service companies were protected by the safe harbor provisions.

Sweet also said in his decision that Kodak was not liable because its conduct was not “volitional.”

Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman says that a portion of the ruling is notable because conventional wisdom holds that “offline photofinishers are strictly liable” for copyright infringement -- meaning they can be held responsible even when they don't know that the photos they print are infringing.

Sweet based his decision about Kodak on the fact that its process for making prints of Photobucket photos was entirely automated. “There is no dispute that any reproduction, display or transmission of the plaintiff's images by or through the Kodak Gallery website is an automated process with no human intervention by any employee of the Kodak defendants,” Sweet wrote.

 

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