OPG v. Diebold

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OPG v. Diebold, 337 F. Supp. 2d 1195 (N.D. Cal. 2004), more officially known as Online Policy Group, Nelson Chu Pavlosky, and Luke Thomas Smith v. Diebold, Incorporated and Diebold Election Systems, Incorporated, was a lawsuit involving an archive of Diebold's internal company e-mails and Diebold's contested copyright claims over them. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Stanford Cyberlaw Clinic provided pro bono legal support for the non-profit ISP and the Swarthmore College students, respectively.

United States District Judge Jeremy Fogel ruled that the plaintiffs' publishing of the e-mails was clearly a fair use, and that Diebold had misrepresented its copyright controls over the work, putting them in violation of section 512(f) of the DMCA and leaving them liable for court costs and damages. This was the first time 512(f) had been enforced in court, and set a precedent.

[edit] The Online Policy Group

The OPG was hosting the website for San Francisco Indymedia when a story linking to the Diebold e-mail archive was posted to SF Indymedia. The link wasn't a direct link to the e-mail archive: upon reaching the linked page, the reader had to click another link to download the memos themselves. Diebold sent legal threats to OPG, asserting that the memos were copyrighted and that SF Indymedia was committing tertiary infringement by linking to a link to the Diebold memos.

[edit] The Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons

Luke and Nelson posted the actual e-mail archive to the SCDC website in an effort to keep the memos available to the public. Diebold sent legal threats to Swarthmore College, asserting that the students were directly infringing upon their copyrights.