Court Rules DMCA Does Not Override First Amendment's Anonymous Speech Protections

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation: Copyright law cannot be used as a shortcut around the First Amendment's strong protections for anonymous internet users, a federal trial court ruled on Tuesday. The decision by a judge in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California confirms that copyright holders issuing subpoenas under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act must still meet the Constitution's test before identifying anonymous speakers.

The case is an effort to unmask an anonymous Twitter user (@CallMeMoneyBags) who posted photos and content that implied a private equity billionaire named Brian Sheth was romantically involved with the woman who appeared in the photographs. Bayside Advisory LLC holds the copyright on those images, and used the DMCA to demand that Twitter take down the photos, which it did. Bayside also sent Twitter a DMCA subpoena to identify the user. Twitter refused and asked a federal magistrate judge to quash Bayside's subpoena. The magistrate ruled late last year that Twitter must disclose the identity of the user because the user failed to show up in court to argue that they were engaged in fair use when they tweeted Bayside's photos. When Twitter asked a district court judge to overrule the magistrate's decision, EFF and the ACLU Foundation of Northern California filed an amicus brief in the case, arguing that the magistrate's ruling sidestepped the First Amendment when it focused solely on whether the user's tweets constituted fair use of the copyrighted works.

EFF is pleased with the district court's decision, which ensures that DMCA subpoenas cannot be used as a loophole to the First Amendment's protections. The reality is that copyright law is often misused to silence lawful speech or retaliate against speakers. For example, in 2019 EFF successfully represented an anonymous Reddit user that the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society sought to unmask via a DMCA subpoena, claiming that they posted Watchtower's copyrighted material. We are also grateful that Twitter stood up for its user's First Amendment rights in court.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.