Court in Georgia finds for RIAA in Spinrilla copyright infringement case

By Emmanuel Legrand

Hip-hop streaming platform Spinrilla was held liable for infringing the copyrights of 4,082 sound recordings by the District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. The case against Spinrilla and its founder Jeffery Dylan Copeland was initially filed in 2017 by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), acting on behalf of Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Bros. Records, Atlantic Records and LaFace Records.

  Plaintiffs claimed that Spinrilla users had uploaded mixtapes on the site using works that had not been licensed. In her 47-page ruling, US District Court Judge Amy Totenberg wrote that Spinrilla admitted that 4,082 copyrighted sound recordings were streamed at least once through its website or app. As a result, she granted summary judgment in favour of the RIAA and rejected Spinrilla's DMCA safe harbour defence.

  The judge wrote: “Here, Plaintiffs do not rely solely on uploads and downloads of their music to and from Spinrilla. Defendants have created an interactive internet player that streams copyrighted content directly from its website and mobile app."

Not eligible for safe harbour defence

  On the DMCA safe harbour protections claimed by Spinrilla, the judge noted that to qualify for the safe harbour defense, a service provider must have a designated agent to receive notifications of claimed copyright infringement. Judge Totenberg wrote that since Spinrilla first registered as a DMCA agent five months after the lawsuit started, it cannot claim claim protection for acts that took place before its registration.

  “The undisputed facts demonstrate that Defendants did not satisfy all of the required elements to be eligible for safe harbour defence until July 29, 2017, which is when they first designated an agent with the US Copyright Office and had adopted a repeat infringer policy," reads the ruling.

  Judge Totenberg added: "Defendants have created an interactive internet player that streams copyrighted content directly from its website and mobile app. In doing so, Defendants have infringed Plaintiffs’ exclusive right 'to perform' their copyrighted sound recordings 'publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.' Therefore, Plaintiffs are entitled to summary judgment on their claim of direct infringement of the 4,082 works in suit."

Sending a message to streaming providers

  The ruling was welcomed by the RIAA, whose Chief Legal OfficerKenneth L. Doroshow said it "sends a message that online streaming providers cannot hide behind the actions of their users to avoid their own liability for copyright infringement that occurs through their systems." 

  For Doroshow, the decision also "reaffirms that merely characterising unauthorised copies of sound recordings as ‘mixtapes’ does not make them any less infringing than any other unauthorised uses of copyrighted works. The court got it exactly right on several key points of copyright law in the digital streaming context, and we hope that it serves as a lodestar for other courts and service providers alike.”

  TorrentFreak noted that while the ruling was "an early win for the music companies, the case isn’t over just yet," since there are matters that still have to be decided at trial, including the scale of the damages.

Pursue mediation

  Judge Totenberg wrote in the ruling that the matter could be resolved through a mediation process. The parties can file their Consolidated Pretrial Order on Plaintiffs’ claim for damages no later than January 13, 2021, or alternatively the parties could attempt to resolve the case through a mediation with former discovery Special Master Carlos A. González before going to trial. Should they decide to do so, they should notify the court no later than December 16, 2020. "In the event the parties agree to pursue mediation, the Court will stay the deadline for filing the Consolidated Pretrial Order pending the outcome of the mediation," wrote the judge.

  Another case is still pending: Spinrilla sued the RIAA at the start of 2020, accusing the trade group of sending false DMCA takedown notices.