Unfounded infringement claims by copyright owner

lead to damages award against it. Larry Lessig reports:

EFF and CIS received news of a huge victory yesterday in the Diebold case. In an opinion released yesterday, the Court held 512(f) of the DMCA could be used affirmatively against the company for its baseless claims of copyright infringement brought against the Swarthmore students who posted memos from Diebold on the net. These are the same amazing students who then launched the Free Culture Movement.

The post links to the opinion, which is pretty short and readable — the basic conclusion is that the students’ posting of internal Diebold memos was so clearly a fair use that Diebold must have known that the students weren’t infringing (or at least should have known this); therefore, under section 512 of the Copyright Act, it’s liable for knowing material misrepresentation in its letter to the ISPs that claimed the documents were infringing and thus had to be taken down.

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