their site, the defendants had removed these notices and the watermark. The court ruled that
such removal violated the DMCA’s CMI provisions on a motion for default judgment.^1435
The plaintiff sought to recover a statutory damages award for the removal of each of the
notices. The court rejected this request, ruling that the individual items of CMI that the
defendants removed were immaterial. Citing Stockwire, the court noted that the number of
violations of the CMI provisions was to be measured by the number of times the unauthorized
product was posted on the Internet for distribution. Because the defendants had posted six
different versions of the infringing rate calculator program onto the Internet (versions for six
different states), the plaintiff was entitled to six awards of statutory damages. Because the
plaintiff had sought only the minimum statutory damages award of $2,500 per violation, the
court awarded statutory damages totaling $15,000.^1436
(vi) Pacific Stock v. MacArthur & Co.In this case, the defendant posted the plaintiff’s photographic work on its website with
the plaintiff’s CMI on the work removed and false CMI inserted in its place. Upon a default
judgment, the magistrate judge found that the plaintiff’s actual damages from the defendant’s act
of copyright infringement were the license fee the plaintiff would have charged for the use of the
work in the amount of $7,505. Noting that a statutory damages award under Section 1202 for the
CMI violation should bear some relationship to actual damages, the magistrate judge
recommended a statutory damages award of $10,000 under Section 1202 for the CMI violation,
and a statutory damages award of $35,000 under Section 504(c)(1) for willful copyright
infringement.^1437 The district court adopted the magistrate’s recommendations and supporting
opinion in full.^1438
(vii) Agence France Presse v. MorelThe facts of this case are set forth in Section II.G.1(b)(1)(ii).e above. Upon cross
motions for summary judgment, the court had to resolve a dispute among the parties concerning
how statutory damages should be calculated for CMI violations. Specifically, the plaintiff Morel
contended that Section 1203(c)(3)(B) allowed him to recover a separate award of statutory
damages for each entity that downloaded or received his photos from AFP or Getty with false
(^1435) Granger v. One Call Lender Services, LLC, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 104885 at 2-4, 13 (E.D. Pa. July 26, 2012).
(^1436) Id. at 13-14. The court also awarded statutory damages of $12,000 for copyright infringement. The court
rejected the plaintiff’s claim that it should be entitled to a statutory damages award for each infringing
derivative work the defendants had created – i.e., versions of the program for New Jersey, Maryland, Florida,
Indiana, and Virginia. “Plaintiff is entitled to recover for only one work since Defendants only infringed upon
Plaintiff’s single Rate Calculator, and all remaining calculators were merely derivative works of the Rate
Calculator.” Id. at 8-10.
(^1437) Pacific Stock, Inc. v. MacArthur & Co., 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 128258 at 413-16 (D. Haw. Sept. 10, 2012).
(^1438) Pacific Stock, Inc. v. MacArthur & Co., 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 142449 (D. Haw. Oct. 2, 2012).