Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. v. Fung
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
710 F.3d 1020 (2013)
Gary Fung (defendant) operated BitTorrent-based websites that let users find and download torrent files pointing to copyrighted movies and shows, actively curated lists of top-20 available TV and movie torrents, moderated a forum where he advised users on downloading files, and earned advertising revenue, with over 90 percent of content on his sites being copyrighted; Columbia Pictures (plaintiff) sued for contributory infringement under an inducement theory, and the district court granted Columbia summary judgment, rejecting Fung's DMCA safe-harbor defense.
Whether inducement liability exists if a party provides a method of infringing a copyright, intends for others to infringe a copyright, and causes others to infringe that copyright.