JOLT Digest

Tenth Circuit Affirms Liability for Seller of Private Telephone Records

By Tyler Lacey – Edited by Anthony Kammer
Federal Trade Commission v. Accusearch Inc., June 29, 2009, No. 08-8003
Slip Opinion

On June 29, 2009, the Tenth Circuit affirmed the Wyoming District Court, holding that Accursearch’s sale of private telephone records on its Abika.com website constituted an unfair practice in violation of the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTCA) and granted summary judgment for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Dan Gooden of The Register provides an overview of the opinion. Eric Goldman criticizes the court’s opinion on his Technology & Marketing Law blog. Although Goldman doubts that “the literal holding of this case is all that troubling to most folks” he believes that the court “muddles the discussion” of each of the CDA immunity prongs.  In particular, Goldman believes that the court erred when it decided that “develop” was essentially synonymous with “publish” for the purposes of analyzing CDA immunity. Goldman describes the opinion as a “major carveback of [the CDA]’s coverage” and predicts problems for online retailers that republish third-party content. (more…)

District Court Upholds First Amendment Challenge to the URAA
By Caitlyn Ross – Edited by Stephanie Weiner

Golan v. Holder
D. of Colorado, April 3, 2009, No. 01-cv-01854-LTB
Memorandum Opinion (hosted by the Stanford Fair Use Project)

On April 3rd, the United States District Court for the District of Colorado granted plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment, upholding the First Amendment challenge to Section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA), codified in 17 U.S.C. §104A. The case was on remand from Golan v. Gonzales (10th Cir.), which instructed the District Court to evaluate the First Amendment implications of restoration.  Judge Lewis T. Babcock held that §104A, which restored copyright in certain foreign works that had previously fallen into the public domain, cannot survive First Amendment scrutiny.

The URAA restored the US copyrights of foreign authors whose works entered the public domain for any reason other than the expiration of a copyright term in the work’s country of origin. The Tenth Circuit determined that the law “altered the traditional contours of copyright protection” by restoring copyrights in works of foreign origin that were previously in the public domain in the United States and therefore the law was subject to First Amendment scrutiny. The court held that once the works entered the public domain, the plaintiffs acquired a vested interest in the speech. On remand, the District Court – which had previously upheld § 104A – held that this provision of the URAA violates the First Amendment insofar as it suppresses parties’ rights to continue using works they had exploited when those works were in the public domain.

According to Anthony Falzone of the Stanford Fair Use Project, which is litigating the dispute, this is “the first time a court has held any part of the Copyright Act violates the First Amendment.” The Technology & Marketing Law Blog provides an overview of the case. (more…)

Stronger 1st Amendment Review of Expansions in Copyright Protection?

By Nick Bramble

On September 5, the 10th Circuit handed down its opinion in Golan v. Gonzales, No. 05-1259 (10th Cir. Sept. 4, 2007). The court held that the implementation of the Berne Convention on Copyrights (the Uruguay Round Agreements Act § 514) may violate the 1st Amendment by removing some materials–books, films, and songs, mostly–from the public domain and placing them under copyright protection. Generally, the court’s ruling would expand the scope of 1st Amendment review when Congress acts to change copyright law. The court reasoned that if Congress alters the “traditional contours of copyright protection,” then its actions should be subject to strict or intermediate scrutiny. See Slip Op. 05-1259 at 16. The 10th Circuit concluded that URAA § 514 did alter these “traditional contours” by deviating from the “bedrock principle of copyright law that works in the public domain remain in the public domain.” Id. at 16-17. It remanded to the district court to determine whether § 514 was a content-based or content-neutral restriction on speech and to apply the necessary 1st Amendment review.

From the free culture side of the copyright debate, Jack Balkin celebrates the ruling but cautions that its overreliance on Eldred v. Ashcroft’s “traditional contours of copyright law” test might justify expansions of copyright law if it can be shown that new copyright laws “create differences only in degree rather than kind” and “are part of a gradual historical progression of increased copyright protection.” Larry Lessig weighs in on Golan’s relevance to his petition to the Supreme Court to grant review of Kahle v. Gonzales, a recent 9th Circuit ruling that looked less favorably on a similar constitutional challenge to copyright law. William Patry is far less enthusiastic, calling the ruling “the first vindication of an approach argued by Larry Lessig and colleagues that I had thought made no sense at all.”