Tumblr Sued For 'Widespread And Uncontrolled' Copyright Infringement

Copyright-Symbol-AAdult entertainment company Perfect 10 has sued Tumblr for allegedly infringing copyright by allowing users to post images owned by Perfect 10.

Tumblr is "willfully ignoring the widespread and uncontrolled copyright infringement pervading its website," Perfect 10 alleges in its complaint, filed Friday in the Southern District of New York. The case appears to mark the first time that Tumblr has been sued for copyright infringement.

Web sites that host user-generated content typically are immune from infringement liability for material posted by users, providing that the sites remove the material upon request.

Perfect 10 alleges in its lawsuit that it sent Tumblr a total of six Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notices regarding more than 200 allegedly infringing images. Perfect 10 says that Tumblr has "failed to completely process any of Perfect 10's DMCA notices, taking down at most only a handful of the over 200 infringing images."

It's not yet clear whether Perfect 10's notices met all of the requirements of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In other cases, judges have ruled that copyright holders must identify the precise URLs that are infringing, as opposed to identifying a piece of content -- such as a song, or TV show. 

In addition, a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled in a separate lawsuit brought against Google by Perfect 10 that many takedown notices sent by the company were deficient because they weren't sufficiently detailed.

1 comment about "Tumblr Sued For 'Widespread And Uncontrolled' Copyright Infringement ".
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  1. Dan Smith from Funco, Inc., May 8, 2012 at 9:34 a.m.

    I think the past failures may be why they have moved the actions to the 2nd Circuit. Not all courts are as strict as the 9th Circuit regarding DMCA notices.

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