Media Creation & Consumption is Challenging Traditional Legal Notions.
At a time when #media creation & consumption has transformed, two recent cases, both involving Fox News Network on opposite sides of the “fair use” defense to copyright infringement, highlights the evolving and dynamic legal challenges facing business and content creators. In each case, Fox News loses on Summary Judgment.
Photographs, Fair Use & Social Media
The first case, North Jersey Media Group, Inc. v. Jeanine Pirro and Fox News Network, LLC, involves what many recognize as the “now iconic photograph of the firefighters raising the American flag on the ruins of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.” The photograph – which bears a striking resemblance to Joe Rosenthal’s World War II photograph of the Iwo Jima flag-raising – has become a similarly striking symbol of American patriotism.
That similarity was not lost on a production assistant for a Fox News program “Justice with Judge Jeanine” who posted the two images, unaltered, on the show’s Facebook Page, along with the phrase “#neverforget,” allegedly to commemorate the twelfth anniversary of the attack.
The case is noteworthy for its analysis of the “fair use” defense in a social media context. While the Copyright Act grants authors certain exclusive rights, including the rights to reproduce the copyrighted work and to distribute those copies to the public (17 U.S.C. § 106(1), (3)) one often quoted and widely misunderstood limit to those rights is the doctrine of “fair use,” which allows the public to draw upon copyrighted materials without the permission of the copyright holder in certain circumstances. The fair use doctrine is an after-the-fact defense to infringement, not a pre-emptive justification to use another’s work without permission.
Educated in journalism and media studies, the production assistant acknowledged that she understood a copyright to be something that is owned by someone else although she had no training in copyright law either in college or during her tenure at Fox News. She had been working at Fox News for approximately three years, had previously sought legal advice regarding use of photographs on the broadcast, but never in connection with posting images to the program’s Facebook page.
The key take-away for businesses and digital marketers alike is the need for vigilance when using third-party content on social media. Employee education and training on what copyright protects, what it doesn’t, and how it works may help prevent your business form facing a similar situation.
Media Monitoring, Digital Content & Copyright Fair Use
The second case, Fox News Network, LLC v. TVEyes, Inc., involves a company that monitors and records all broadcasts by more than 1,400 television and radio stations twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week. This content is indexed and organized in a searchable database that allows subscribers to search terms, determine when, where, and how those search terms have been used, and obtain transcripts and video clips of the portions of the television show that used the search term.
Fox News Network, LLC sued to enjoin TVEyes from copying and distributing clips of Fox News programs. TVEyes asserted that its system and services are permitted under the doctrine of “fair use.”
The court found that TVEyes service was a fair use. Unlike other services that simply “crawl” the Internet, culling existing content available to anyone willing to perform enough searches to gather it, the indexing and excerpting of news articles, where the printed word conveys the same meaning no matter the forum or medium in which it is viewed, the service provided by TVEyes is transformative. By indexing and excerpting all content appearing in television, every hour of the day and every day of the week, month, and year, TVEyes provides a service that no content provider provides. Subscribers to TVEyes gain access, not only to the news that is presented, but to the presentations themselves, as colored, processed, and criticized by commentators, and as abridged, modified, and enlarged by news broadcasts.
The key take away for technology companies that rely on content is what the court says about features of the Services (as opposed to the technology itself, e.g. the software/platform): the issue of fair use is for the full extent of the service, TVEyes provides features that allow subscribers to save, archive, download, email, and share clips of Fox News’ television programs. The parties have not presented sufficient evidence showing that these features either are integral to the transformative purpose of indexing and providing clips and snippets of transcript to subscribers, or threatening to Fox News’ derivative businesses.”
In other words, evidence that certain features are essential to the use of a service, may be sufficient to show how the features (service) exist above- and-beyond what stale or static content can show.
You Don’t Have to Muddle Through
When it comes to understating evolving technology legal risks, your business can’t simply muddle through. The professionals at the Adler Law Group can help you adopt conduct risk assessments, provide employee training and methodologies for approaching these challenges by setting objectives, determining scope, allocating resources, and developing practices that will efficiently and effective manage risks, while keeping pace with the business.
For a free consultation, call us at (866) 734-2568, send and email to info@ecommerceattorney.com or visit our web site www.adler-law.com
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