DMCA Hurts Copyright Holders, Too

adam613 writes: "Further proof that the DMCA is designed to protect corporations rather than copyright holders: ZDNet is reporting that an author who published e-books that an AOL user posted on Usenet can not hold AOL legally responsible. While AOL is an ISP and ISPs can not feasibly censor their users, AOL is also a content provider, just like Napster. In the end, the copyright holder who the DMCA is supposed to protect got screwed. Things could start to get interesting here...any lawyers ready to make judges start scratching their heads?"

Because AOL is an ISP

[outlier]

Just because AOL is a content provider, doesn't mean they shouldn't be protected when they act as an ISP.

Yes, the DMCA sucks huge amounts of ass. Yes, the DMCA was designed to protect big content providers and not copyright holders. Yes, AOL is a big (evil?) corporation.

BUT, one of the few sane aspects of the DMCA is that it doesn't hold ISPs liable if they remove infringing material. This allows ISPs to react to claims in a reasonable manner (note, that doesn't guarantee they will, it only enables them to). If ISPs could be held liable for everything their users did, how long before AOL and others began enforcing even more draconian restrictions preempting their users' behaviors...

The DMCA sucks, is evil, etc... But this provision isn't the reason.

Political Ignorance

[Vodak]

While I do not agree with term limitations for congressional office this is what you get when you have career politicians in office unchallenged for all many years. If your congress person doesn't understand the subject he/she is voting on then get rid of him/her. All people including the readers of Slashdot need to stop voting someone into office because they believe in a single issue.

Re:This has to be good...

[Rick the Red]

I don't understand your reasoning. You say this ruling is good because "If this doesn't prove that the DMCA should be repealed, I don't know what will." I disagree. What this proves is that the DMCA works as designed: AOL was protected, and the individual (in this case Harlan Ellison) got screwed.

This case might make industry think twice about the DMCA if the copyright work in question were owned by, say, Bertelsmann [bertelsmann.com] or another AOL-Time-Warner [aoltimewarner.com] competitor. But as the suit was brought by some puny individual (no offense, Mr. Ellison [harlanellison.com], but you're not a mega-media conglomerate) and the Right [riaa.org] Side [mpaa.org] won, this won't change the opinions of Anyone [house.gov] That [ftc.gov] Matters [senate.gov].

Re:Because AOL is an ISP

[Anonymous Coward]

This case was, frankly, bullshit.

The guy sued AOL for having USENET servers that happened to have some illegal content passed through them. USENET relies on *everyone* passing on articles, or it breaks down.

AOL *should not* be liable for this any more than the phone company should when you send pirated music over your phone line.

I have a really hard time working up any anger at the DMCA for doing this. I'd be pissed if it didn't.

We don't want it both ways.

[Fat Casper]

AOL is just as "responcible" for the content that its users make publicly available as the old Napster was. When the company is a little guy, it gets crucified. When the company is AOL-TW, the same logic used to reach an anti-Napster verdict gets thrown out the window. This case highlights the intellectual dishonesty in both the DMCA and its enforcement. It is not about protecting copyright holders, as the enforcers claim. If the reasoning in this case were applied to the Napster case, then Napster would be back to the way it used to be.