The following is a guest post by Jason Sloan, attorney-advisor.
The December 31 deadline is soon approaching for online service providers to re-register their previous DMCA agent designations with the U.S. Copyright Office. What’s this all about? Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), certain kinds of online service providers—for example, those that allow users to post or store material on their systems, and search engines, directories, and other information location tools—can obtain safe harbor protection from copyright infringement liability by, among other things, designating an agent to receive notifications of claimed copyright infringement. To designate an agent, a service provider must:
- Make certain contact information for the agent available to the public on its website.
- Provide the same information to the Copyright Office, which maintains a centralized online directory of designated agent contact information for public use.
- Ensure that this information is kept up to date.