The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled that subpoenas ordering Charter Communications, an Internet service provider (ISP), to turn over personal information on users suspected of copyright infringement, were improperly issued and therefore not enforceable. The decision overturned a November 2003 District Court decision, which refused to quash the subpoenas, issued at the request of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), a trade group representing record companies.The Appeals Court based its decision on an interpretation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a 1998 law designed to protect intellectual property rights on the Internet. The DMCA provides that copyright holders may direct subpoenas to ISPs requiring the ISPs to turn over the names and identifying information of users suspected of infringing copyrighted works. But the Court found that the provision allowing copyright holders to subpoena ISPs did not apply to cases in which an ISP served only as a “conduit” for allegedly infringing materials, but rather only to cases in which an ISP actually hosted, cached, or linked to allegedly infringing materials.
The Court based this conclusion on text in the DMCA requiring the inclusion of a copy of a “notification of claimed infringement” in any request for subpoena. Since this notification (which a copyright holder provides to an ISP to allow it an opportunity to remove or disable access to infringing materials before being served with a subpoena) is required by the statute only in cases in which the ISP hosts, caches, or links to allegedly infringing materials, the Court concluded that the intent of the DMCA is to provide “safe harbor” to ISPs who are mere conduits for allegedly infringing behavior by their users.
The Court noted that its decision is consistent with the recent D.C. Circuit Court holding in RIAA v. Verizon, 351 F.3d 1229, 1232 (D.C. Cir. 2003), on nearly identical issues. The Court declined to consider other arguments offered by Charter for not enforcing the subpoenas, though it did describe as “colorable” an argument that a subpoena, as an order of the court, requires a “case or controversy at the time of its issuance.”
The Court vacated the decision of the District Court and remanded the matter to that court to order the return and destruction of all information turned over to the RIAA as a result of the subpoenas.