Looking for a Crack to Break the Internet's Back: The Listen4ever Case and Backbone Provider Liability Under the Copyright Act and the DMCA

Authors

• Daniel W. Kopko

Abstract

In August 2002, a group of 13 record labels brought a lawsuit against the four major companies that provide the "backbone" infrastructure of the Internet. The record labels sought an injunction under section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1982 ("DMCA") to compel the defendants to block access to a China-based website, Listen4Ever.com ("Listen4ever"), that offered free downloads of entire albums of copyrighted music from its central server. The labels alleged that Listen4ever located its operations in China specifically to evade U.S. copyright laws. They noted that the site was in English and offered almost exclusively music by popular American artists such as Bruce Springsteen, Christina Aguilera, and The Red Hot Chili Peppers. The site's operators, meanwhile, took steps to avoid detection, providing questionable contact information in their domain name registration and including no identifying details on the site itself.

Recommended Citation

Daniel W. Kopko, Looking for a Crack to Break the Internet's Back: The Listen4ever Case and Backbone Provider Liability Under the Copyright Act and the DMCA, 8 Computer L. Rev. & Tech. J. 83 (2003)