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Copyright continues to serve its purpose as a tool for censorship, it seems. This week there was some hubbub over Apple’s highly questionable decision to send a DMCA takedown notice over a tweet by a security researcher who goes by “Siguza,” and who appeared to publish an iPhone encryption key on Twitter:
iPhone11,8 17C5053a sepi 9f974f1788e615700fec73006cc2e6b533b0c6c2b8cf653bdbd347bc1897bdd66b11815f036e94c951250c4dda916c00
— Siguza (@s1guza) December 8, 2019
Twitter took it down upon receipt of the takedown notice, but later put it back after Apple rescinded the takedown — either realizing that the takedown was bogus or futile (or, I guess, both).
You can understand (sorta) why Apple would want to protect the key, but copyright seems like exactly the wrong tool for the job. Of course, that’s often the case, but copyright is such an easy tool to abuse to try to silence speech that it is often the preferred tool of would-be censors. This is just one example. But it does raise questions. Is an encryption key even copyright-eligible? That seems highly unlikely. Copyright only is supposed to apply to the creative elements of a work, and it would be difficult to argue that an encryption key meets the “creative” level necessary. US courts have already decided that phone numbers are not subject to copyright (even made up numbers), so it seems unlikely that an encryption key would pass muster for getting a copyright.
Potentially Apple could have been making a DMCA 1201 “anti-circumvention” argument as well — but even that seems silly, and only highlights the problems of the anti-circumvention provisions of Section 1201 of the DMCA. When a single tweet with a single code is seen as “circumvention” then there’s a big problem — and that problem is the law.
It’s good that Apple backed down on this, though it still highlights the problems of the DMCA takedown process, and how it can be used unfairly for censorship — even if that “censorship” completely backfired this time.
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Copyright statute of limitations cases are relatively rare, but we have written about a few such cases at times. Still, here’s a new ruling that tosses out a case based on the statute of limitations, involving a guy suing Jerry Seinfeld claiming infringement over the latter’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee series. Though, it seems like the case could have been defeated other ways as well, even if it had been filed within the statute of limitations.
U.S. District Judge Alison J. Nathan of the Southern District of New York ruled Monday that the suit by Christian Charles, a writer and director who worked with Seinfeld on the show’s pilot, was barred under the three-year statute of limitations for copyright infringement claims.
In a nine-page ruling, Nathan said that Charles knew about his potential claim for ownership as early as 2011, when Seinfeld twice rejected his request for back-end compensation on “Comedians in Cars,” making it clear that Charles’ only involvement was on a work-for-hire basis.
But Charles, who claimed to have pitched the idea of two friends “driving and talking” to Seinfeld, did not file his lawsuit until February 2018.
Which was roughly around the time that Seinfeld took the show from its fun little origins on Crackle and inked a lucrative deal for the series with Netflix, where it now resides. Suddenly Charles asserted a copyright claim, stating that it was his idea to have a comedian hosting a talk show of sorts by driving around in a car and getting coffee. And if you’re thinking that such a claim would be defeated by the idea/expression dichotomy in copyright law, well, you’re right. It almost certainly would have. Such a concept is plainly a broad idea and not the kind of specific expression over which one can successfully sue on copyright grounds. Add to all of that that Seinfeld claims that Charles’ work on the pilot was work for hire, for which he was paid a six figure sum, and the lawsuit sure seemed like a loser from the get-go.
But the suit didn’t even get that far, as the judge tossed it over the 3 year statute of limitations instead.
“Even if all inferences are drawn in favor of Charles, a reasonably diligent plaintiff would have understood that Seinfeld was repudiating any claim of ownership that Charles may have,” Nathan wrote.
“Because Charles was on notice that his ownership claim had been repudiated since at least 2012, his infringement claim is time-barred,” she said.
Charles’ attorney states they intend to appeal on the grounds that the judge is misinterpreting the statute of limitations. As to what that misinterpretation might be? Well, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
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Class Action Filed Over UConn Health Data Breach That Could Have Affected 326,000 Patients | Connecticut Law Tribune Law.com
The first lawsuit stemming from February’s announcement that a University of Connecticut Health Center data breach could have affected 326,000 current and …