Judge rules WCAC did due diligence in dispute over copyright; Channel 781 plans appeal

The U.S. District Court will not require cable news station Waltham Community Access Corp. to pay citizen newsgroup Channel 781 News in a lawsuit over fair use of city meeting recordings.

District court Judge Patti B. Saris recently ruled in the WCAC’s favor, deciding that the organization believed in good faith that Channel 781 News violated fair use policy when it reported Channel 781 News’ videos to YouTube for copyright infringement.

WCAC, which is primarily funded by Waltham’s cable TV subscriptions, records and broadcasts Waltham government meetings and other locally produced content. It also posts its content, including the recordings of those meetings, on its website. In 2023 Channel 781 News, a coalition of Waltham residents attempting to broaden visibility of Waltham politics, posted clips from WCAC recordings of government meetings as part of YouTube talk shows and as standalone videos.

In the leadup to the 2023 municipal election, WCAC requested that Channel 781 News take down its videos that included clips from WCAC recordings. Channel 781 News posted content that expressed critical views on sitting Waltham officials, and WCAC’s executive director Maria Sheehan stated on air that the network objected to the use of its content “to score political points under the veil of anonymity.”

After a discussion with the channel on what constituted fair use, WCAC employees issued copyright takedown notices to YouTube on 15 clips that Channel 781 News used in its videos. Youtube took down the videos in question and temporarily removed Channel 781 News from the platform days before the mayoral primary.

Channel 781 News sued WCAC in 2024, protesting that its videos were covered under fair use law and the latter’s actions served to shut down its political speech rights. 

In an Aug. 18 decision, Saris supported part of Channel 781 News’ argument. She wrote that WCAC failed to consider important components of the fair use law: the fact that the YouTube clips were short, that the content was a factual recording and not a creative work, and that Channel 781 News did not make money off them.

Still, Saris wrote that wasn’t sufficient to win the suit; Massachusetts law firmly requires evidence that WCAC was not acting in good faith. Saris determined WCAC employees conducted research and believed their copyright claim was genuinely justified. She added that Channel 781 News’ arguments attempted to “smuggle” into the case a question of whether WCAC’s decision was reasonable.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights organization that has been assisting with Channel 781 News’ legal representation, disagrees.

“Our argument is about good faith,” wrote EFF senior staff attorney Betty Gedlu. “A copyright holder should not be able to … go through the motions of saying it considered fair use, and then claim a good-faith belief, particularly where the takedown process is being used to accomplish a purpose unrelated to protecting legitimate copyright interests, such as silencing a critic.”

The EFF wrote that it plans to appeal the decision to the First Circuit Court of Appeals sometime next week. In a public statement, it called Saris’ decision “an alarmingly low bar for copyright holders seeking to remove someone else’s speech from the internet.”

Neither WCAC nor Channel 781 News responded to requests for comment.