Inside Move: Collateral damages
AOL part of Ellison copyright lawsuit
In April 2000, Ellison filed suit in Los Angeles after a hacker scanned six of his works into a computer and posted them to a USENET group -- a kind of Internet discussion site.
Also sued was Critical Path Inc., the company that hosted USENET, and AOL, which added the group to its system in August 1999.
To Ellison's surprise, no one was interested in joining his suit.
Says Ellison, 67, "I suspect that what's behind this is that no one in the publishing industry wants to mess around with AOL Time Warner because they are the biggest behemoth on the horizon."
Nearly two years and $250,000 in legal fees later, Ellison has gotten settlements from the hacker, and recently from Critical Path, which agreed to develop software to block unauthorized use of his work.
The amount of the financial settlement was not disclosed.
But AOL is adamant it is immune from liability under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
AOL argues that Internet providers cannot be held liable for posting pirated work as long as they comply with DMCA procedures for taking down the material after a copyright holder notifies them of an infringement. AOL blocked access to Ellison's work after 13 days -- two days after he filed suit.
Ellison's lawyers say the issue is not so cut-and-dry. "The DMCA is not a get-out-of-jail-free card," says Charles Petit. "We believe that AOL should never have carried the newsgroups, because there were red flags that they contained pirated material."
Lawyers for both sides get to log back into court this week.
