IP Law Daily, COPYRIGHT—N.D. Cal.: No 'identicality' requirement for DMCA violations, (Jun 5, 2026)

By Matthew Hersh, J.D.

Another court joins the growing divide over whether removing CMI from a non-identical copy can be actionable.

A media company that allegedly purloined excerpts from a string of weather-related videos and repackaged them into a single video that it uploaded to YouTube could be held liable under the DMCA for removing copyright management information even though the video the network uploaded was not an identical copy to any of the ones it allegedly purloined, the District Court for the Northern District of California has held. But the court, while rejecting this line of defense to the lawsuit, found that the DMCA claim failed anyway because it did not identify facts plausibly showing that the alleged infringer had the required mental state under the statutory double-scienter intent requirement (Global Weather Productions, LLC v. Al Jazeera Media Network, No. 5:25-cv-05891-BLF (N.D. Cal. Jun. 3, 2026)).

The lawsuit was brought by Global Weather Productions, a videography company that licenses and distributes copyrighted videos of extreme weather events filmed by professional storm chasers, videographers, and journalists. The videography company and several of its content creators sued Al Jazeera Media Network for the unauthorized display of those videos on Al Jazeera’s YouTube channel. The complaint asserts claims for copyright infringement and falsification of copyright management information in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA.

Al Jazeera moved to dismiss the DMCA claim, leading to this opinion.

Identical copy requirement. The court rejected the media company’s first argument for dismissal. The media company argued that false copyright management information, or CMI, is actionable only if it is conveyed in connection with an identical copy of the plaintiff’s work. Here, the media company noted, the complaint alleged that it edited the original videos, cropped out proprietary watermarks and metadata, and then combined those videos with other video content from third parties before uploading the resulting video to its YouTube channel. Even if true, the media company argued, this alleged conduct could not give rise to a claim for falsification of CMI because the video the company uploaded to its own channel was not identical to any of the copyrighted videos. The court disagreed.

The argument was wrong, the court found, because it was based on a misreading of the DMCA. Before reaching the statutory language, though, the court noted the substantial split in authority over the issue. (IP Law Daily has covered this split many times, including here, here, here, and here.) One court in Manhattan, for example, the court noted, has held that “a party that puts its own CMI on work distinct from work owned by a copyright holder is not liable under Section 1202(a), even if the party’s work incorporates the copyright holder’s work.” Michael Grecco Prods., Inc. v. Time USA, LLC, 2021 WL 3192543, at *5 (S.D.N.Y. July 27, 2021). Several decisions in the Central District of California were to the same effect. Meanwhile, the court noted, federal courts in various other jurisdictions, including Arizona and Texas, had concluded that there was no “identical copy” requirement in the DMCA.

The latter line of cases had it right, the court found. The DMCA, the court noted, defines CMI as certain information conveyed in connection with “copies” of a work. 17 U.S.C. § 1202(c). Nothing in that provision, the court noted, specified that the copy must be identical to the original work. Moreover, under the Copyright Act, the court noted, “copies” are defined as “material objects, other than phonorecords, in which a work is fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.” 17 U.S.C. § 101. That definition of “copies,” the court noted, also does not contain an identicality requirement. Indeed, the court noted, “[n]othing in the language of the DMCA or the Copyright Act as a whole supports insertion of the word ‘identical’ before the word ‘copies’ in the § 1202(c) definition of CMI.” Accordingly, based on the plain language of the DMCA and the Copyright Act, the court reasoned, there was “no ‘identical copy’ requirement for a false CMI claim under § 1202(a).”

Intent. But while the DMCA claim would survive a challenge based on an identical copy requirement, the court found, it would not survive scrutiny over allegations of intent. A plaintiff asserting a claim under § 1202(a), the court noted, must satisfy what is often referred to as a “double scienter” requirement by plausibly alleging that the defendant (1) knowingly provided, distributed, or imported for distribution false CMI and (2) did so with the intent to induce, enable, facilitate, or conceal an infringement. Given that the media company itself had allegedly removed the CMI at issue, the court found, the complaint adequately alleged that it acted with knowledge. But nothing in the complaint alleged that the media company altered the CMI “to induce, enable, facilitate, or conceal an infringement,” the court noted. The only relevant language in the complaint, the court noted, was made up of only conclusory allegations with no additional facts. “[S]omething more than boilerplate allegations mirroring the statutory language is required,” the court noted.

The Case is No. 5:25-cv-05891-BLF.

Judge: Freeman, B.

Attorneys: Matthew Laurence Rollin (Sriplaw) for Global Weather Productions, LLC. Gina Louise Durham (Dla Piper LLP) for Al Jazeera Media Network.

Companies: Global Weather Productions, LLC; Al Jazeera Media Network

Cases: Copyright CaliforniaNews