It’s no secret that some content owners don’t seem to understand how the DMCA works—that, or they simply don’t care when sending mass takedown notices. This seems to be the case with the recent saga of legal maneuvers between the National Football League (NFL) and Brooklyn Law School professor Wendy Seltzer. The two have been going back and forth with DMCA-related “requests” since early February—with YouTube stuck in between—and in the process, the NFL itself appears to have violated the DMCA.
Seltzer outlines in her blog post, the NFL’s only option in response to her counter-claim would be to force her to remove the clip via court proceedings. This obviously did not happen, and instead, the NFL chose to ignore her claims completely. After receiving her counter-notification claiming fair use, sending another takedown notice over the same content is considered a knowing misrepresentation that the clip is infringing, according to DMCA section 512(f)(1). Under the DMCA, the NFL would be liable for all legal fees incurred by the alleged infringer, along with damages.
I found this to be a real interesting article because I have a lot to learn about the DMCA law.
Apparently the DMCA Digital Millennium Copyright Act isn’t very one sided. A content provider (such as Youtube) is protected if they take down a disputed clip. However the person that submitted the clip has a right to dispute that claim and the content provider is supposed to put the clip back up. At this point it’s up to the first party to seek remedy in court.
Rather than doing that the NFL chose to send another notice to take down the clip. Apparently that’s illegal and apparently the submitter in this case is an attorney and a member of the Electronic Freedom Foundation. So she’s ready to make a test case out of this.
Videos on the internet is the wave of the future. As far as I’m concerned the NFL is hurting themselves by not having more of their clips on the internet. Having clips of football games is only going to make people want to view live games that much more.