Wendy Seltzer v. the NFL

Wendy Seltzer, a former EFF attorney and current professor at Brooklyn Law School, posted a clip of the NFL’s copyright notice to YouTube as an example of fair use.

Pursuant to the DMCA, the NFL’s bots find the clip and send YouTube a takedown notice. Wendy then sent a counter-notification and YouTube reposted the clip.

Guess what?

The NFL took the clip down again, sending another takedown notice instead of following proper procedure:

The DMCA way for NFL to challenge that, per 512(g)(2)(C), would be to “file[] an action seeking a court order to restrain the subscriber from engaging in infringing activity relating to the material,” which they haven’t. Sending a second notification that fails to acknowledge the fair use claims instead puts NFL into the 512(f)(1) category of “knowingly materially misrepresent[ing] … that material or activity is infringing.”

What next?

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