On April 16, the News/Media Alliance filed an amicus brief on behalf of the appellants in the case of Doe v. GitHub, on appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The brief urged the court to reject GitHub’s contention that Section 1202(b) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act imposes an identicality requirement, establishing liability for the removal of copyright management information (CMI) only if the copied work is identical to the original. GitHub had defended its removal of CMI from the plaintiffs’ copyrighted works on a massive scale on the grounds that the copies were not identical to the original works. The brief also asked the court to reverse the dismissal of the plaintiffs’ Section 1202(b) claims. Discussing the clear statutory language and legislative history, the brief noted that adopting the identicality requirement would “require adding language to the statute beyond that which Congress chose to include” and deprive rightsholders of their protections. It also discussed how the requirement was unsupported by case law and would be in tension with the U.S.’ implementation of the WIPO Internet Treaties. The brief was filed together with the Association of American Publishers, the Authors’ Guild, and the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers.
Members of the News/Media Alliance staff have contributed to this post.