Music Company Brings Suit Against Another University
On October 3, 2019, Yesh Music, LLC ("Yesh"), filed another law suit alleging copyright infringement and violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”). Yesh brought this suit against Ecoagriculture Partners (“Eco”), Cornell University (“Cornell”), and Groundswell Center for Food and Farm Planning (“Groundswell”) (collectively the “Defendants”). The facts of this case are similar to the facts of Yesh's recent suits against other institutions (you can find posts about these cases here, here, here, and here).
In its complaint, Yesh alleges that Eco and Cornell created a video advertisement which synchronized plaintiff’s copyrighted recording entitled "Time (Ambient)," (the "Copyrighted Recording"), and the entities allegedly distributed the video broadly. Groundswell was featured in the video, and posted the video advertisement to YouTube where it could be viewed by the general public. Yesh claims Groundswell posted the video in an effort to attract viewers to its paid workshops. Groundswell and Eco both allegedly ignored cease and desist notices Yesh sent in August 2019, after Yesh detected the alleged infringement.
Yesh states that the Defendants violated 17 U.S.C. § 106 by copying, synchronizing, distributing, and publicly displaying the Copyrighted Recording. In addition, Yesh asserts that the Defendants’ failure to include any copyright management information and failure to identify the correct copyright holder were violations of the DMCA.
According to Yesh, the Defendants' "utter disregard for [Yesh's] rights" entitles Yesh to elect enhanced statutory damages of up to $150,000 for the copyright violation and up to $25,000 for the DMCA violation.