Drawing on these principles, the court ruled that the DMCA places a limit on the viability
of an otherwise adequate notice, and with respect to the instant case, “Hendrickson’s January,
2002, letter, claiming all Manson DVDs violate his copyright, although adequate for the listings
then on Amazon, cannot be deemed adequate notice for subsequent listings and sales, especially,
as here, when the infringing item was posted for sale nine months after the date of the
notice.”^2503 Accordingly, Amazon’s lack of knowledge of the infringing activity satisfied the
first prong of the safe harbor under Section 512(c)(1)(A).^2504 Amazon satisfied the second prong
of the safe harbor under Section 512(c)(1)(B) because, although it received a financial benefit
from its third party sellers, the court held that there was no evidence to suggest that Amazon had
“the ability to know that an infringing sale by a third party seller would occur,” and hence it
could not control such sales.^2505 Accordingly, the court granted Amazon summary judgment
under the safe harbor of Section 512(c).^2506
g. Rossi v. MPAAA peripheral issue relating to the notice provisions of the Section 512(c) safe harbor was
raised in the case of Rossi v. Motion Picture Association of America, Inc.,^2507 in which the
plaintiff was the operator of a web site called internetmovies.com, an online directory of artists’
works and an Internet news magazine providing information and resources about movies on the
Internet. The MPAA found statements on the web site such as “Join to download full length
movies online now! New movies every month”; “Full Length Downloadable Movies”; and
“NOW DOWNLOADABLE” followed by graphics from a number of the MPAA’s copyrighted
movies. The MPAA sent a Section 512(c) written notice to the plaintiff’s Internet service
provider asking that it remove the plaintiff’s web site from its server because of the site’s
allegedly infringing content.^2508
The plaintiff sued the MPAA for, among other things, tortious interference with
contractual relations and tortious interference with prospective business advantage, and the
MPAA moved for summary judgment. Under Hawaiian law, the plaintiff was required to show
that the MPAA acted without justification. The MPAA argued that its actions were justified
because the DMCA authorized it to send the plaintiff’s Internet service provider a notice
requesting that it shut down the plaintiff’s web site.^2509
The plaintiff argued that the MPAA was not justified in sending the DMCA notice
because, in order to have “a good faith belief” of infringement, the copyright owner is required to
conduct a reasonable investigation into the allegedly offending website. The plaintiff argued that
(^2503) Id. at 1474.
(^2504) Id.
(^2505) Id.
(^2506) Id.
(^2507) Rossi v. Motion Picture Ass’n of America, Inc., 391 F.3d 1000 (9th Cir. 2004).
(^2508) Id. at 1002.
(^2509) Id.