Forgive me if there's already a thread on this. I ran a search and scanned the first few pages but didn't see anything.
Music publishers are suing Roblox for copyright infringement. The publishers claim that Roblox encourages users to upload music, charges them for doing so, but takes insufficient steps to prevent users from uploading copyrighted music without a license. I'm only partway through the complaint, which you can read here. The key legal issue is going to be whether Roblox is entitled to safe harbor under the DMCA (specifically 17 USC 512(c)). The publishers argue that Roblox does not qualify for safe harbor because it failed to register a DMCA agent for receiving takedown notifications, hasn't reasonably implemented a repeat infringer policy (i.e. Roblox's three-strikes rule is too generous in practice), and allows users to form groups dedicated to sharing pirated music.
A few initial thoughts:
Music publishers are suing Roblox for copyright infringement. The publishers claim that Roblox encourages users to upload music, charges them for doing so, but takes insufficient steps to prevent users from uploading copyrighted music without a license. I'm only partway through the complaint, which you can read here. The key legal issue is going to be whether Roblox is entitled to safe harbor under the DMCA (specifically 17 USC 512(c)). The publishers argue that Roblox does not qualify for safe harbor because it failed to register a DMCA agent for receiving takedown notifications, hasn't reasonably implemented a repeat infringer policy (i.e. Roblox's three-strikes rule is too generous in practice), and allows users to form groups dedicated to sharing pirated music.
A few initial thoughts:
- Failing to register a DMCA agent is awfully dumb, but you do sometimes see it with newer companies or companies that don't realize they might have user-generated content issues. I'm not sure what happened here. Roblox looks like they're generally conscientious about DMCA stuff.
- The repeat infinger policy issue is going to be interesting. The law itself is vague about what a repeat infringer policy needs to look like (for good reason -- online service providers have very different functions and user bases). Roblox did have a repeat infringer policy that included the possibility of terminating users after three strikes. The publishers say the termination provision was fake because Roblox counted consecutive infringements within 45 days as part of one strike, so users could amass a huge number of copyright violations without accruing a third strike and facing account termination (to give Roblox's side: the reason companies have those time bands for consecutive strikes is because you don't want a situation where a user uploads ten unlicensed songs in a few hours and gets ten separate strikes before even one of them is resolved). Lurking in the background here is a case from last year where music publishers won a $1 billion judgment against the ISP Cox, in part because there was evidence Cox was selectively choosing not to terminate highly-active users. That judgment is on appeal now, but in the meantime it's quite a cudgel for the publishers.
- FWIW, I think Roblox has a plausible defense here. The DMCA agent thing is sticky but not usually fatal. The asserted facts about their repeat infringer policy aren't anywhere near as ugly as the ones in Cox (although it's possible they would get worse after discovery). And the rest of the complaint actually goes some way toward showing that Roblox was making an effort to comply with the DMCA. The trouble is that even with a plausible defense, you don't want to take a case like this all the way to trial.
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