Does the DMCA's Safe Harbor Apply to Pre-1972 Sound Recordings?

Some of the most commercially successful and popular music of all time – including the entire catalog of The Beatles – is subject to a degree of uncertainty under current copyright law in the United States due to an anomaly in the federal copyright framework with respect to older sound recordings. Because these recordings are not protected under federal copyright law, commentators and courts are uncertain as to whether online hosts of such recordings are protected under the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

When Congress passed the Copyright Act of 1909, it did not extend federal statutory protection to audible musical works (i.e., a song as recorded by a particular artist). Despite falling outside of the Act's provisions, however, sound recordings remained eligible for copyright protection under state common law.

Sound recordings were entitled solely to state law protection for the better part of the 20th century, until advances in technology (enter the cassette tape) made the unauthorized reproduction of existing sound recordings simpler than ever before. In response, a number of states adopted criminal statutes proscribing music piracy in the 1970s. Shortly thereafter, Congress reacted to the issue by overhauling federal copyright law, amending the Copyright Act of 1909 to include sound recordings within the classes of creative works entitled to federal protection.

However, this amendment was forward-looking. Only those sound recordings created after February 15, 1972, would be eligible for federal protection; those fixed beforehand would remain subject to state common law copyright. This dual system of copyright was preserved by Section 301(c) of the Copyright Act of 1976, which states:

With respect to sound recordings fixed before February 15, 1972, any rights or remedies under the common law or statutes of any State shall not be annulled or limited by this title until February 15, 2067.

So, the vast body of pre-1972 sound recordings remains subject to patchwork protection under inconsistent (and sometimes conflicting) state laws. In the era of sharing and distributing music online, even greater legal challenges have arisen.  

For all other types of copyrighted works, those who run websites hosting content uploaded by users can look to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 512 ("DMCA") for certain protections from liability (so long as they comply with the Act's requirements). Among other provisions, the DMCA creates a notice-and-takedown regime for third-party content that allegedly infringes copyright (see more here). However, the DMCA is part of the federal Copyright Act, and it is not clear from the face of the statute whether its protections apply to sound recordings that fall outside of the Copyright Act under Section 301(c).

The U.S. Copyright Office and two courts in New York (one state and one federal) have weighed in on this question, but the issue is far from resolved. Both the Copyright Office and the New York courts agree that the DMCA should apply to pre-1972 recordings - but the New York Supreme Court and the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York held that the DMCA already applies to pre-1972 recordings as the law currently stands, while the Copyright Office thinks Congress should amend the Copyright Act to achieve this end.

The Courts' Approach

In 2007, fourteen record companies brought a federal copyright infringement action against online storage locker site MP3tunes in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The case, Capitol Records, Inc. v. MP3tunes, LLC, turned largely on whether MP3tunes was eligible for the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA.

The plaintiffs moved for summary judgment and argued that the DMCA did not apply to any songs recorded prior to February 15, 1972, relying on § 301(c) together with definition of "infringement of copyright" in § 501 of the Copyright Act (the general definition of copyright infringement). The DMCA, argued the plaintiffs, provided protection against "infringement of copyright," and § 501 stated that "infringement of copyright" was infringement of the exclusive rights granted under federal law. Therefore, they claimed, the DMCA was not intended to provide immunity from liability for infringement of rights provided under state law.

The district court, determining that this was an issue of first impression, looked to the text of Section 512 and honed in on the DMCA's safe harbor against liability for "infringement of copyrights [sic]" to hold that "copyright" encompassed both common law copyright and federal copyright. Therefore, the court found that the DMCA extended to pre-1972 sound recordings protected under sta