Last week, CCIA filed two amicus briefs in copyright cases: Mavrix v. LiveJournal, a 9th Cir. case about the DMCA safe harbors, and Elsevier v. Sci-Hub, an S.D.N.Y. copyright case involving proposed preliminary injunctions against non-party intermediaries.
CCIA’s brief in Mavrix v. LiveJournal, joined by the American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries, the Association of Research Libraries, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, explained that the DMCA safe harbors have provided business certainty that has enabled substantial online and traditional commerce, as well as facilitating Internet-enabled, First Amendment-protected speech, including political speech. The brief also clarified specific DMCA issues relating to monitoring and “red flag” knowledge. LiveJournal won at the district court, as explained by Prof. Eric Goldman, and CCIA’s brief asked the 9th Circuit to affirm that holding.
In Elsevier v. Sci-Hub, the brief filed by CCIA and the Internet Commerce Coalition opposed the broad preliminary injunction sought by Elsevier, which attempted to bind “any Internet search engines, Web Hosting, and Internet Service Providers”. As discussed in detail in a recent EFF blog post on a similar case, plaintiffs are increasingly asking district courts to issue injunctions that would purport to bind the conduct of parties who are not before the court, including non-party online service providers. The CCIA-ICC brief explains that such orders overstep the bounds of Rule 65 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the All Writs Act, and that relief is also barred by the DMCA Section 512 safe harbors.