In a long-standing case brought against the video platform Vimeo by several music publishers, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently set the bar high for copyright owners to succeed in their infringement claims against service providers based on allegations of “red flag knowledge.”
The Second Circuit, shedding some light on what is needed to establish red flag knowledge, rejected the publishers’ argument that Vimeo was not entitled to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s (DMCA) “safe harbor” protections for numerous videos on Vimeo’s platform that included their copyrighted music because the facts and circumstances made the infringements apparent.