(cross post from Truth on the Market)

If you haven’t been following the ongoing developments emerging from the demise ofGrooveshark, the story has only gotten more interesting. As the RIAA and major record labels have struggled to shut down infringing content on Grooveshark’s site (and now its copycats), groups like EFF would have us believe that the entire Internet was at stake — even in the face of a fairly marginal victory by the recording industry. In the most recent episode, the issuance of a TRO against CloudFlare — a CDN service provider for the copycat versions of Grooveshark — has sparked much controversy. Ironically for CloudFlare, however, its efforts to evade compliance with the TRO may well have opened it up to far more significant infringement liability.

In response to Grooveshark’s shutdown in April, copycat sites began springing up. Initially, the record labels played a game of whac-a-mole as the copycats hopped from server to server within the United States. Ultimately the copycats settled on grooveshark.li, using a host and registrar outside of the country, as well as anonymized services that made direct action against the actual parties next to impossible. Instead of continuing the futile chase, the plaintiffs decided to address the problem more strategically.

High volume web sites like Grooveshark frequently depend upon third party providers to optimize their media streaming and related needs. In this case, the copycats relied upon the services of CloudFlare to provide DNS hosting and a content delivery network (“CDN”). Failing to thwart Grooveshark through direct action alone, the plaintiffs sought and were granted a TRO against certain third-parties, eventually served on CloudFlare, hoping to staunch the flow of infringing content by temporarily enjoining the ancillary activities that enabled the pirates to continue operations.

CloudFlare refused to comply with the TRO, claiming the TRO didn’t apply to it (for reasons discussed below). The court disagreed, however, and found that CloudFlare was, in fact, bound by the TRO.

Unsurprisingly the copyright scolds came out strongly against the TRO and its application to CloudFlare, claiming that

Copyright holders should not be allowed to blanket infrastructure companies with blocking requests, co-opting them into becoming private trademark and copyright police.

Devlin Hartline wrote an excellent analysis of the court’s decision that the TRO was properly applied to CloudFlare, concluding that it was neither improper nor problematic. In sum, as Hartline discusses, the court found that CloudFlare was indeed engaged in “active concert and participation” and was, therefore, properly subject to a TRO under FRCP 65 that would prevent it from further enabling the copycats to run their service.

Hartline’s analysis is spot-on, but we think it important to clarify and amplify his analysis in a way that, we believe, actually provides insight into a much larger problem for CloudFlare.

 

Continue reading on Truth on the Market

 

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