Action Item: This alert provides an overview of important new changes to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) portion of U.S. copyright law that impact online service providers (“OSPs)—including countless websites, e-mail services, forums, and network and communications services with the Internet. If your business operates a website that allows customers or users to post photos or other content that might be viewed as infringing by somebody else, for example, this simple and inexpensive procedure could help limit your liability in the future.

The DMCA provides certain legal protections (or “safe harbors”) for OSPs against liability for secondary copyright infringement claims related to materials submitted by third-parties. That is, if you receive a complaint to remove a user’s content, with safe harbor protections you can safely avoid being entangled in a dispute between the user and the complainant. Yet, to qualify for the safe harbors, an OSP must formally designate an agent with the U.S. Copyright Office to receive infringement complaints and allow the Copyright Office to publish that agent’s name and contact information in an official DMCA registry. The process is straightforward.

Until recently, agents were designated through a traditional paper form process. The designations were believed to be permanent. The Copyright Office has recently changed the procedures for qualifying for the DMCA’s safe harbors, however, and announced that the original registry is being wiped clean. Now the process is handled online and the registrations will need to be renewed every three years. Further, with the original registry having become outdated and inaccurate, the Copyright Office has indicated that, as of December 31, 2017, all existing DMCA agent designations from the original paper process will be terminated.

If you think that you may qualify as an OSP, and especially if you designated an agent with the Copyright Office through the original procedures, we urge you to contact Blank Rome’s Intellectual Property and Technology practice group to register you with the U.S. Copyright Office to ensure that the safe harbors apply to you.