This case entails a UGC anime website referred to as Gelbooru, run by Hopson. Rightsowners despatched DMCA takedown notices focusing on the positioning to Google. (Lumen has many takedown notices containing the phrase “Gelbooru”). Google stripped out the notices’ figuring out info and forwarded the notices to Hopson. Google deindexed the positioning from its search index and issued warnings earlier than searchers clicked on the search outcomes for the positioning. Hopson counternoticed the takedown notices per 512(g), however Google didn’t budge. The court docket dismisses the lawsuit.
Failure to Honor Counternotice. Hopson claims that Google didn’t comply with 512(g)’s preconditions. Regardless of. The court docket says Google’s “alleged failure to adjust to § 512(g) doesn’t create direct legal responsibility for any violation of plaintiffs’ rights. It merely denies Google a secure harbor protection ought to plaintiffs carry another declare towards the ISP for eradicating allegedly infringing materials, similar to a state contract or tort regulation declare.” Cites to Martin v. Tumblr.
As I wrote with the Martin case:
no service ever wants the 512(g) secure harbor as a result of different authorized doctrines foreclose legal responsibility. For instance, Tumblr’s TOS contained a provision saying “Tumblr could instantly terminate or droop Accounts which have been flagged for repeat copyright infringement” (once more, that is primarily dictated by the DMCA preconditions) and for any/no motive. So this case highlights why 512(g) is functionally irrelevant in court docket instances, although many providers voluntarily select to course of and honor counternotices as contemplated by 512(g) regardless of its authorized irrelevance.
So the court docket rejects any affirmative explanation for motion predicated on 512(g), and unsurprisingly, the opposite claims fail on their lack of deserves.
Deindexing. Claims based mostly on deindexing are barred by the First Modification:
[the] claims towards Google problem its editorial judgments about what to publish or not publish — whether or not by limiting and filtering the web site’s contents or filtering search outcomes. Thus, quite a few district courts have concluded that such exercise is protected by the First Modification.
Cites to e-venture v. Google, Zhang v. Baidu, Langdon v. Google.
The court docket says it’s unclear if Part 230 additionally protects deindexing selections within the Seventh Circuit, citing Huon v. Denton and Chicago Lawyers v. Craigslist. Whereas the Seventh Circuit has made an pointless and unhelpful mess of its Part 230 jurisprudence, that’s additionally inconsequential on this case. The court docket’s ruling as a substitute reiterates that content removal decisions are protected by more than Section 230.
Case quotation: Hopson v. Google, LLC, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 57196 (W.D. Wis. March 31, 2023). The complaint.