Testimony Before the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition,

and the Internet, Committee on the Judiciary

United States House of Representatives

112th Congress, 1st Session

Floyd Abrams

Senior Partner, Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP

Thank you for the opportunity to testify before your Committee today regarding

online commerce and the challenges of legislating and enforcing copyright and piracy laws in an

Internet age. I am a senior partner at the law firm of Cahill, Gordon and Reindel in New York

and the author of “Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment.” I appear today at your re-

quest, speaking on my own behalf. For your information, I have previously advised, in writing,

the Directors Guild of America, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the

Screen Actors Guild, the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees, and the Mo-

tion Picture Association; of my view that legislation introduced in the Senate relating to online

privacy of copyrighted works was consistent with the First Amendment.

While I will discuss potential legislative approaches to online infringement in

some detail today, I think it is useful to start with a few broader observations regarding the appli-

cation of copyright law and the First Amendment online. I begin with what should not be con-

troversial.

The Internet is one of the greatest tools of freedom in the history of the world.

That is why there is an “urgent need” to protect freedom of expression on the Internet throughout

the world, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton observed last month. At the same time, however,

Secretary Clinton pointed out that “all societies recognize that freedom of expression has its lim-

its,” and that those who use the Internet to “distribute stolen intellectual property cannot divorce

their online actions from their real world identities” -- indeed, our ability to “safeguard billions

of dollars in intellectual property [is] at stake if we cannot rely on the security of our information

networks.”
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 It is no answer to this challenge to treat loose metaphors—the Internet as “the

Wild West,” for example—as substitutes for serious legal or policy analysis. It is one thing to

say that the Internet must be free; it is something else to say that it must be lawless. Even the

Wild West had sheriffs, and even those who use the Internet must obey duly adopted laws.

Thus, it is no surprise that libel law routinely applies to material that appears on

the Internet just as it does to other material. And that libel precedents regarding printing informa-

tion on paper are just as applicable to information posted online. (A recent holding to that effect

was the Fifth Circuit’s ruling in Nationwide Bi-Weekly Administration, Inc. v. Belo Corp.) And,

as well, that principles of privacy law are applied to personal information posted online, just as

they are to personal information when recorded in more traditional media. (That approach was

affirmed in Benz v. Washington Newspaper Publishing Co.)

Copyright law is no different. One current treatise succinctly notes, “[a]ll existing

copyright protections are applicable to the Internet.” The seizure provisions of copyright laws

have been applied to authorize the seizure of online property that facilitates infringement, such as

domain names, just as physical property has often been seized to stop its use to facilitate in-

fringement. Under current law, for example, recent enforcement actions against infringing sites

involved seizing and locking domain names, and compelling registries to route visitors to a gov-

ernment address notifying the public of the seizures.

Copyright law has existed throughout American history. The Constitution itself

authorizes Congress to adopt copyright legislation. The first such legislation was enacted in

1790, a year before the First Amendment was approved by Congress. And from the start, injunc-

tions were one form of relief accorded to victims of copyright infringement. Courts applied the

first copyright act to grant injunctions under traditional principles of equity. Since injunctions in

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cases outside of the specific copyright context have been held to be unconstitutional prior re-

straints on speech, including the landmark Supreme Court cases of Near v. Minnesota and New

York Times Co. v. United States, there has been an ongoing debate about the application, if any,

of the First Amendment to copyright principles. Indeed, the question of whether and, if so, how

certain elements of the Copyright Act should be read to accommodate various First Amendment

interests remains open.

The law could not be clearer, however, that injunctions are a longstanding, consti-

tutionally sanctioned way to remedy and prevent copyright violations. That premise was explicit

in the critical concurring opinion in the Supreme Court’s most famous prior restraint case, as-

sessing publication of the Pentagon Papers in New York Times Co. v. United States. As Justice

Byron White’s concurring opinion observed in that case, “no one denies that a newspaper can

properly be enjoined from publishing the copyrighted works of another.”

Current treatises reflect this judicial consensus. To quote from the 2010 Practic-

ing Law Institute discussion of prior restraints, which I authored with my colleague Gail Johns-

ton: “[C]ourts have found no constitutional obstacle to enjoining, pursuant to federal legislative

mandate, the unlawful use of a registered trademark or copyright.” Similarly, in an article fo-

cused squarely on the issue of injunctions in the copyright arena, Judge James L. Oakes observed

that a “pirated or copied edition, record, movie, song or other work . . . cries out for an injunc-

tion.”

The Supreme Court’s most detailed treatment of the interrelationship between the

First Amendment and copyright, the seminal case of Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. v. Nation

Enterprises, stressed that the Copyright Act actually advances the very interests which the First

Amendment protects.

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 “First Amendment protections,” the Court noted, are “already embodied in the

Copyright Act’s distinctions between copyrightable expression and uncopyrightable facts and

ideas.” The Constitution supports the explicit protection of such expression and creativity, the

Court stated, within a framework that defends both the right to speak and the ability to profit

from speech. “[T]he Framers intended copyright itself to be the engine of free expression,” ex-

plained the Court, and “[b]y establishing a marketable right to the use of one’s expression, copy-

right supplies the economic incentive to create and disseminate ideas.” Copyright law thus forti-

fies protections for speakers and creators, in a First Amendment context, while stimulating future

creativity.

These mutually reinforcing linkages between protections for speech and protec-

tions for copyright are especially important in today’s digital age. The Center for Democracy

and Technology’s David Sohn, who testified before this Committee to raise concerns about tar-

geting rogue sites -- and who does not share all of my views in this area -- recently stated a

proposition with which I think there can be no serious disagreement: “Large-scale copyright in-

fringement undermines First Amendment values in promoting expression and threatens the

growth of new media.”

Of course, the evident constitutionality of injunctive relief for copyright violations

does not mean that injunctions must automatically or always be issued in response to a copyright

violation. As this Committee is well aware, the Supreme Court has recently held to the contrary,

warning against the error of a “categorical grant” of injunctive relief for patent infringement in

eBay Inc. v. MercExchange. The Second Circuit applied that conclusion in a recent, celebrated

copyright case, Salinger v. Colting. What no court has ever denied is that injunctions are a valu-

able and constitutional response to copyright violations.

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 With these foundations in mind—the Internet is not a law-free zone, and copy-

right law with injunctive relief has always been part of the constitutional framework protecting

free speech—I turn to a few priorities worth considering when legislating in this area.

Your hearings are entitled “Promoting Investment and Protecting Commerce

Online: Legitimate Sites v. Parasites,” drawing an important distinction between two types of

sites on the Internet. In the copyright context, legitimate sites distribute work that they own or

may legally use through fair use principles, or otherwise, while parasites distribute work that

they have stolen. A sound policy to combat infringement must target these infringing websites,

without overly burdening legitimate ones. In fact, I think it is fair to say that the primary consti-

tutional questions that must be addressed in shaping legislation in this area revolve around this

very distinction: How do we separate infringing sites from legitimate sites? Or, in First Amend-

ment lingo: What is the potential overbreadth of a regulation’s impact on speech, and what pro-

cedural protections must a regulation provide to satisfy First Amendment norms?

Potential Overbreadth

It is axiomatic in First Amendment jurisprudence that government restrictions on

speech should be narrowly tailored to avoid unnecessarily burdening protected speech.

Courts apply strict scrutiny to statutes that potentially interfere with protected speech, with spe-

cial scrutiny of rules that may sweep too broadly. This Committee must thus consider the poten-

tial overbreadth of any legislation impacting speech, including legislation designed to combat

online infringement and piracy. I offer a few questions to consider in doing so, in the context of

legislating against online infringement.

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 First, how does a bill define the requisite level of infringement that the govern-

ment must prove in order to seek remedies against particular content, or a given site or domain?

In other words, how high is the bar set? A “zero tolerance” policy towards any instances of in-

fringement enforced at the level of a website or domain -- where an entire website could be

blocked or seized for a single, or just a few, offenses -- would plainly raise the most troublesome

First Amendment concerns. By contrast, setting a high bar, by statute, can help avoid the risk of

unnecessarily burdening protected speech.

The Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act, or “COICA,” which

was sent to the floor by the Senate Judiciary Committee in the last Congress, provides one poten-

tial approach to establishing such a bar. The bill would establish a statutory category of sites that

are “dedicated to infringing activities,” defined as sites that are “marketed” or “primarily de-

signed” for infringement, or have no other “commercially significant purpose or use” besides

infringement. Such infringement is defined under current copyright and trademark law, and

which would otherwise be “subject to civil forfeiture”. Thus for copyright violations, a site must

be “dedicated to infringing activities” and offering goods or services in violation of title 17

U.S.C, or facilitating such violations by means such as downloading, streaming, transmitting or

linking. For trademark violations, a site must be “dedicated to infringing activities” and offering,

selling or distributing goods, services or counterfeit materials in violation of section 34(d) of the

Lanham Act (15 U.S.C. 1116(d)). There are obviously other words that might be used to de-

scribe a site subject to regulation in this area, but however phrased, the speech at issue must be

overwhelmingly violative of the Copyright Act for any such regulation to be constitutional.

Beyond setting the bar high, another issue is how authorities carry out enforce-

ment actions in a manner that respects First Amendment norms. In an action that drew signifi-

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cant attention, on February 15, 2011, the Homeland Security Department seized several domain

names on child pornography charges and accidentally blocked other websites that had not been

deliberately targeted. Media reports estimated that up to 84,000 sites were temporarily shut

down. Three days after the seizure, the Homeland Security Department acknowledged that it had

“inadvertently seized” a “higher level domain name,” which impacted other sites, and the de-

partment sought to restore those sites “as soon as possible.” Such an error, even for a short pe-

riod of time, is obviously of great concern and it is important to explore how safeguards and

technical standards might be effectively incorporated into legislation to prevent or minimize such

abuse.

Third, how does a bill compliment or interact with existing remedies against in-

fringement and piracy? Under current copyright law, for example, copyright violations can be

remedied by injunctive relief, forfeiture or impoundment. Statutory schemes that follow these

approaches, and include their protections and processes under federal precedent, are likely to op-

erate on a clearer, more sound constitutional foundation than remedies that are developed from

scratch. Indeed, while the Internet does pose some novel and unique regulatory challenges,

Congress should generally aim to apply already existing standards wherever possible, rather than

treat cyberspace as a land with laws unto itself.

Fourth, does a bill’s remedy focus on combating infringement where it occurs, or

does it act as a bar to future, protected speech? Any bill providing injunctive relief should be

limited to halting infringement and prohibiting future infringement online, not acting as a prior

restraint on protected speech in the future. For example, if a site or domain is seized or blocked

for infringement, operators must be free to post all their non-infringing content elsewhere, as

well as on their original site, once the infringing content is removed. Indeed, I do not think a

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court would find constitutional any regulation or order barring individuals from finding ways to

use the Internet to post or relocate protected speech.

Procedural Protections

The Constitution requires due process for all, and the procedural protections af-

forded to expression, for speakers and listeners alike, carry special weight in First Amendment

law. Individuals accused of infringement, by the government or civil litigants, must be afforded

notice and an opportunity to be heard. Thus the most straightforward approach in this area, both

constitutionally and practically, is to ensure that any new legislation provides the same process

and protections that federal litigants currently have when facing the possibility of injunctive

remedies.

One way to achieve this aim is to incorporate Rule 65 of the Federal Rules of

Civil Procedure into legislative proposals in this area. That would ensure that any injunctive re-

lief against infringing sites is governed by the rules protecting all litigants in civil actions in the

United States today. That is the approach of COICA, and while this Committee will make its

own, independent judgments about how best to craft a legislative approach to combat infringe-

ment, the inclusion of Rule 65 is a worthwhile element in any regulatory framework.

Under Rule 65, courts “may issue a preliminary injunction only on notice to the

adverse party.” For temporary restraining orders to be issued without notice, Rule 65 requires

that two conditions must be met. “[S]pecific facts in an affidavit or verified complaint [must]

clearly show that immediate and irreparable injury, loss, or damage will result . . . before the ad-

verse party can be heard in opposition.” And “the movant’s attorney certifies in writing any ef-

forts made to give notice and the reasons why it should not be required.” The rule then requires
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that hearings for orders without notice are to be held “at the earliest possible time, taking prece-

dence over all other matters,” and the adverse party may move to dissolve or modify an order on

two days’ notice to the moving party. Therefore, a website operator that prefers to respond later,

or learned of an action later because the operator did not provide accurate contact information to

the registry, would still retain the right to seek later relief from the order.

In the cases of delay caused by the submission of false contact information to a

domain registrar, a relevant complication for many infringing and foreign websites, it is worth

noting that federal copyright law already treats the knowing submissions of “materially false

contact information to a domain name registrar” as a rebuttable presumption of willful infringe-

ment. In a similar vein, some operators of infringing websites, including operators abroad, may

knowingly decline to participate in U.S. court proceedings. Such a choice, after legitimate notice

and procedural safeguards are provided, can lead to ex parte proceedings and default judgments.

Courts routinely enter default judgments in civil lawsuits, including comparable online copyright

cases. Indeed, under current law, after initial notice has been served, courts have granted perma-

nent injunctive relief for copyright violations in default judgments without additional attempts at

notice.

Nonetheless, the ultimate test for any legislation providing injunctive relief is not

the words in the statute, but the words of a judge interpreting or passing judgment upon its valid-

ity. While a court is empowered to grant injunctions, it need not. While a court is empowered to

grant temporary restraining orders, it may not. That does not excuse Congress, of course, from

its duties to craft constitutional legislation and carefully weigh the tradeoffs in a given public

policy. The irreplaceable role of an independent judicial officer should anchor, however, our

reasonable expectation that legislation which provides proper process will ensure website opera-

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tors accused of infringement and piracy shall be entitled to their day in court. Whether they ac-

cept or evade that obligation will be up to them.

Conclusion

Addressing infringement and piracy in a manner consistent with our constitutional

protections for speech is an important and complex challenge. The Senate has already chosen

one route, which I believe would be held constitutional, and whether this House chooses to legis-

late similarly or not, it should plainly take the greatest care to abide by First Amendment norms.

I offer a final thought about the broader debate. I would like to directly acknowl-

edge that potential action by Congress in this area has drawn objections from groups and indi-

viduals advocating their deeply held beliefs about civil liberties, human rights and a free Internet,

including many groups that I have worked alongside, and for which I have the highest regard.

Among a range of objections, however, two core critiques stand out.

First, there is a recurring argument that the United States would be less credible in

its criticism of nations that egregiously violate the civil liberties of their citizens if Congress

cracks down on rouge websites.

Second, there is the vaguer notion, which I discussed earlier, that stealing is some-

how less offensive when carried out online.

Neither of these propositions is correct.

Copyright violations are simply not protected by the First Amendment. Rogue

websites, which live off theft and are plainly dedicated to infringement and piracy, are not en-

gaging in speech that any civilized, let alone freedom-oriented, nation protects. That these in-

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fringing activities occur on the Internet makes them not less, but more harmful. The fear that by

combating these specific acts through legislation, the United States would compromise its role as

the world leader in advancing a free and universal Internet seems to me insupportable. As a mat-

ter of both constitutional law and public policy, the United States must remain committed to de-

fending both the right to speak and the ability to protect one’s intellectual creations. Legislation

designed to enforce old laws in a new, wired era does not thwart the constitutional right to en-

gage in speech. Quite the opposite. It protects creators of speech, as Congress has since this Na-

tion was founded, by combating its theft.

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