Advanced Copyright Law on the Internet

The court issued two germane instructions. The first pertained to the issue of willfulness
generally:

As used in these instructions, an act is done willfully if it is done voluntarily and

intentionally with the intent to do something unlawful, that is, with the intent

either to disobey or disregard the law.

While a person must have acted with the intent to do something the law forbids,

the person need not be aware of the specific law or the rule his conduct is

violating. Willfulness requires the Government to prove that the law imposed a

duty on the Defendant, that the Defendant knew of this duty, and that he

voluntarily and intentionally violated that duty.^1186

The court then gave the following instruction on “deliberate ignorance”:

No one can avoid responsibility for a crime by deliberately ignoring the obvious.

If you are convinced that the Defendant deliberately ignored a high probability

that he was trafficking in technology primarily designed to circumvent

technological measures designed to effectively control access to a work

copyrighted under copyright law, then you may find that he knew he was

violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

But to find this, you must be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the

Defendant was aware of a high probability that he was violating the Digital

Millennium Copyright Act, and that the Defendant deliberately closed his eyes to

what was obvious.

Carelessness or negligence or foolishness on his part is not the same as

knowledge and is not enough to convict.^1187

Reichert challenged the deliberate ignorance instruction on two bases. First, he argued
that the instruction failed to properly reflect that a defendant is willfully blind only if he took
“deliberate action” to avoid actual knowledge. The court rejected this argument, noting that the
deliberate ignorance instruction in this case tracked the language of Sixth Circuit Pattern
Criminal Jury Instruction § 2.09. The pattern instruction explicitly incorporated the requirement
that a defendant act “deliberately” to avoid full knowledge, and the Sixth Circuit noted that it had
repeatedly held the instruction to be an accurate statement of the law.^1188

Second, Reichert asserted that the deliberate ignorance instruction eviscerated the
DMCA’s willfulness requirement by allowing the jury to convict him upon finding only that he
knew that he was trafficking in circumvention technology, rather than after finding that he knew

(^1186) Id. at 450.
(^1187) Id.
(^1188) Id. at 450-51.