ICYMI: Last week, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Cox in the landmark case, Cox v. Sony. Executive Director @bb.usefairuse.com explains how this is a win for creativity, innovation, and free expression on and off the internet:
On family vacation, playing cards with the kids and Frank Ocean comes on the streaming music shuffle. I tell my daughter: “I liked his early work better, when he was still Frank Glacier. He’s gone soft.” #dadjokes
#FairUseFriday: Exactly 0 perfect brackets remain, but that is part of what makes March Madness so fun! And of course it's not just for basketball fans – the memes, GIFs, and videos created to make fun of the busted brackets (all made possible thanks to fair use) are half the entertainment.
Check out the @eff.org's latest victory against troll-ish law firm Higbee & Associates - lots of lessons here about liability, copyright incentives, and why you can't give rightsholders unchecked power to censor and extort the web: www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...
Anthropic just proved why site-blocking is a dangerous tool. They showed what over-blocking actually looks like: thousands of takedown requests that nuked legitimate content, not just content that infringed on their copyright.
🆕 In a unanimous 9-0 decision, the Supreme Court reversed a $1 billion copyright infringement verdict against Cox Communications, securing a massive victory for the open internet by ruling that internet service providers are not liable for their users' actions.
Screen shot shows credits to motion picture studios
Screenshot shows archival footage all sourced from Getty.
Can’t screenshot Apple Music, so you get these literal screenshots! Here’s who gets the licensing money:
Y’all. Who’s going to tell the Swifties all the Elizabeth Taylor *license fees* are going to a couple of Hollywood studios and Getty Images? It’s the *streaming royalties* going to the ET estate! #itsmeimthepedant
Exciting things are happening today at the UVA Special Collections library. TJ's gone BOGO CRAZY! ONE DAY ONLY! www.instagram.com/p/DWmQXiKkQ...
The Supreme Court says ISPs aren’t responsible for everything their users do online. That means your access to the internet is less likely to be cut off over accusations alone. www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...
⚾ Let’s play ball! Yesterday, baseball season kicked off with plenty of exciting moments, from Carson Benge’s dream debut with the New York Mets to easy dubs from the Washington Nationals and Los Angeles Dodgers. Baseball is officially back and so are the fun memes and fan critiques.
TIL that New York Times journalists are “not in the facts business.” That’s according to the NYT VP/counsel on this panel about scraping and AI, resisting a question about whether it’s hard to enforce use of unprotected factual information. Litigation is a helluva drug.
Much-needed and hotly anticipated decision today from the Supreme Court, putting copyright liability where it belongs: on infringers, not the platforms and tools we all rely on.
ICYMI: Encyclopedia Britannica is suing OpenAI over AI training.
Following a similar complaint against Perplexity, Re:Create Executive Director @bb.usefairuse.com called the move "the definition of hypocrisy."
Read why here: recreatecoalition.org/a-note-from-...
to the RIAA, McGraw-Hill, or any other group. At the end of the day, dozens of advisors and ALI members gave input that improved the document, and judges will make their own choices about when and how to use it. You can read the Tillis/Schiff letter and ALI's reply here: www.ali.org/node/3274
Ultimately, what comes through is that the Senators (or at least the critics they channel) have overreacted hysterically. The Restatement is a typical, down-the-middle secondary source that judges can look to for guidance. It's not the law, and the ALI is not obliged to give a veto
ALI Director (and former Chief Judge of the 7th Cir, prof. at U Chicago, &c&c) Diane P. Wood gives a classy, direct response that reiterates what should be some pretty obvious facts about the Restatement process and how the Copryight Restatement fits the usual approach.
ICYMI, the American Law Institute has responded to a letter from Sens. Tillis and Schiff, which asked pointed questions (strikingly similar to Copyright Alliance talking points) about the Restatement of Law, Copyright. ALI doesn't take the bait.
Why are these congressmen trying to make it more expensive to build safe, accessible housing? Building codes and other safety standards incorporated into the law should be free for all to access and reuse. PRO-CODES is an unconstitutional cash grab for standards publishers.
#FairUseFriday Conan O’Brien’s cold open at the Oscars wasn't just a “replay” of highlights from this year’s best films; it was a fair use parody. By inserting Conan into Weapons, Sinners, and all the Best Picture nominees, the Academy created a new transformative work.
youtu.be/XjvnclCos_0
But on the foundational issue of fair use, really an existential issue for AI training, the framework gets it right, and sends a clear signal to Congress: leave fair use to the courts. The only thing better would be to say if courts get it wrong, fair use should be reaffirmed.
Collective licensing is also a pretty dodgy prospect, as I have written about with Jon Band in a series of articles that starts with this one: works.hcommons.org/records/n6j...
Other recommendations are less great. I continue to doubt that property rights governing AI uses of image and likeness are needed (NIL is already a thing), or even constitutional (faces and voices are unprotectable facts), regardless of attempted carveouts for 1A activity.
The text outlines the Administration's stance on AI model training and copyright laws, urging Congress to leave resolutions to the courts.
The President's AI Legislative Framework, released this AM, gets fair use right on substance and process. Training is fair use, and Congress should leave fair use issues to the courts. TRAIN Act, CLEAR Act, and mislabeled TRUMP AMERICA AI Act are all at odds with White House policy.
Our full statement on the deeply dangerous "TRUMP AMERICA AI Act" is up:
More to come on this, but for now I'll just say that it is deeply ironic that the ongoing, apparently escalating campaign against the Restatement of the Law, Copyright is exactly what it accuses the Restatement of being: a cynical, partisan hatchet job untethered from the law.
Plaintiffs take note: no one owns genre tropes! AI plaintiffs and dilution theory partisans, especially: copyright scope is a thing. You can't block the creation of new works that share only unprotected elements with your own.
Would love to have been a fly on the wall at UMG's litigators' office when they saw their client's leadership emphatically deny that AI "market dilution" is actually a thing that will happen, now or ever, and then double down on it days later.
