This Note presents two arguments. First, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s (DMCA) liability safe harbors are inapposite for private cloud services. Private cloud services are increasingly common offerings where consumers upload content, such as music, movies, or books, to personal cloud storage space, then download or stream that content to a multitude of devices. Although granting safe harbor immunity from secondary liability for user infringement would further the DMCA’s policy to promote technological innovation, doing so would completely ignore the DMCA’s other policy—to protect copyright. Currently, the DMCA protects copyright through its notice-and-takedown procedures, but these provisions depend on the ability of copyright holders to monitor users’ public actions—an impossibility on private cloud services. Second, the private cloud services problem is symptomatic of a larger problem in the DMCA: Its regulatory-like detail and specificity undermine its application to new technologies. The solution to both problems is an administrative one: Delegate rulemaking power to narrowly define safe harbor qualification when new technologies, like private cloud services, are valuable but also both ripe for infringement and unaddressed by the DMCA.
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