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reasonable nondiscriminatory terms, and do not impose substantial costs or burdens
on service providers.
Limitation for Transitory Communications
In general terms, section 512(a) limits the liability of service providers in
circumstances where the provider merely acts as a data conduit, transmitting digital
information from one point on a network to another at someone else’s request. This
limitation covers acts of transmission, routing, or providing connections for the
information, as well as the intermediate and transient copies that are made automatically
in the operation of a network.
In order to qualify for this limitation, the service provider’s activities must meet
the following conditions:
! The transmission must be initiated by a person other than the provider.
! The transmission, routing, provision of connections, or copying must
be carried out by an automatic technical process without selection of
material by the service provider.
! The service provider must not determine the recipients of the material.
! Any intermediate copies must not ordinarily be accessible to anyone
other than anticipated recipients, and must not be retained for longer
than reasonably necessary.
! The material must be transmitted with no modification to its content.
Limitation for System Caching
Section 512(b) limits the liability of service providers for the practice of
retaining copies, for a limited time, of material that has been made available online by
a person other than the provider, and then transmitted to a subscriber at his or her
direction. The service provider retains the material so that subsequent requests for the
same material can be fulfilled by transmitting the retained copy, rather than retrieving
the material from the original source on the network.
The benefit of this practice is that it reduces the service provider’s bandwidth
requirements and reduces the waiting time on subsequent requests for the same
information. On the other hand, it can result in the delivery of outdated information
to subscribers and can deprive website operators of accurate "hit" information —
information about the number of requests for particular material on a website — from
which advertising revenue is frequently calculated. For this reason, the person making
the material available online may establish rules about updating it, and may utilize
technological means to track the number of "hits."
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998
Copyright Office Summary December 1998 Page 11
The limitation applies to acts of intermediate and temporary storage, when
carried out through an automatic technical process for the purpose of making the
material available to subscribers who subsequently request it. It is subject to the
following conditions:
! The content of the retained material must not be modified.
! The provider must comply with rules about “refreshing” material—
replacing retained copies of material with material from the


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