Since the earliest days of the Web, many sites have found success by establishing a thickly populated collection of user-generated content, from eBay auction listings and YouTube videos to the crowd-sourced information of Wikipedia. And since the earliest days of the Web such sites have routinely been plagued by rivals who "scrape" and republish large amounts of this content without authorization. In many instances, when copyright law may seem to provide no effective remedy, plaintiffs seek protection under other bodies of law such as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), clickwrap and browsewrap user agreements, or even the ancient common-law doctrine of trespass to chattels (on the theory that computer servers are chattels and accessing them is a trespass).
This month's case, Craigslist v. 3Taps,1 decided by the Northern District of California on April 29, 2013, continues that creative trend, but it also demonstrates that the Copyright Act can play a significant role in safeguarding online content, even when that content was created by legions of anonymous users. In the process, Craigslist weighs in thoughtfully on several fascinating issues involving copyright licensing, protectability, preemption, and the interplay between copyright and the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Lanham Act in Dastar v. Twentieth Century Fox Film.2
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