Protect Your Web Site and Online Service: Service Provider Liability Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act

Several years ago, an Internet service provider was sued and faced substantial liability merely for being a conduit for certain electronic messages containing material that allegedly infringed certain copyrights held by the plaintiff. The service provider faced liability even though it had not participated in the creation of the allegedly infringing works and did not even know that the messages in question were being sent through its systems. In other words, the service provider faced liability for copyright infringement even though it was merely acting as a "pipe" through which the messages passed.

In a second case, the owner of a Web site was sued because he posted a copy of a computer program that could be used to defeat the access control scheme used by movie studios to prevent unauthorized access to their movies distributed on DVDs. The owner of the Web site was not the author of the program and the program itself did not infringe copyrights held by the movie studios or third parties.

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