After $6M and 17 Years Fighting the Record Labels’ Copyright Lawfare, the Court Awards Vimeo $16k in Costs–Capitol Records v. Vimeo
The record labels sued Vimeo for user-caused copyright infringement in 2009. The case is still ongoing in 2026. How old is this lawsuit? If it were a person, it would be GenZ and thus older than every Gen Alpha person…
SAD Scheme Plaintiff Must Pay $40k to Defendant–Guangzhou Tinpod v. Schedule A Defendants
The plaintiff is Guangzhou Tinpod Electronic Technology Co. The plaintiff initially sued under the XYZ pseudonym and hasn’t updated the case caption, even though its identity is no longer sealed. I presume the plaintiff and many of the 44 defendants…
Courts Still Can’t Let Go of the Possibility that Individual Prices are Copyrightable–Rapaport v. Nivoda
In my previous blog post on this case, I wrote: This lawsuit raises one of the venerable but surprisingly vexing copyright law questions: when is a price copyrightable? That might sound like a stupid question because “facts” aren’t copyrightable and…
New York Judge Shuts Down a SAD Scheme TRO Request–CJB Global v. Schedule A Defendants
This SAD Scheme case ended up before Judge Buchwald, who shreds it. Judge Buchwald recaps the scheme’s fundamental corruptness: if all of plaintiff’s requested ex parte relief were to be granted, plaintiff would at the outset be entitled to broad…
A 512(f) Case Survived a Motion to Dismiss. Guess What Happened Next–Channel 781 v. WCAC
The court describes the case: Plaintiff Channel 781 News (“Channel 781”) is a YouTube-based news outlet focusing on local affairs in Waltham, Massachusetts. Channel 781 posted clips from Waltham municipal government meetings that it believed to be newsworthy. Channel 781…
Every SAD Scheme Opinion Is Weird In Its Own Way–Cai v. Chaozhoushi Yitong Dianzi Shangwu Youxiangongsi
This case generally follows the SAD Scheme template, but with several twists: it’s in the Western District of Texas, not the more typical N.D. Ill. it’s a copyright claim rather than the more typical trademark claim it’s against a single…
CJEU Judgment on Geoblocking & Standards for Knowledge of Foreign Copyright Laws and Geoblocking Measures (Guest Blog Post)
by Prof. Marketa Trimble UNLV Boyd Law School Last month, while sitting at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, a passenger typed www.annefrankmanuscripten.org on her laptop to look up the website at issue in the latest judgment by the Court of Justice of…
Court Greenlights Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Unmasking of Online Critic–In re DMCA Subpoena to Cloudflare
The Jehovah’s Witnesses (the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania) sought to unmask a Doe who uploaded an archive of religious texts, along with some associated linguistic parsing tools, to a website (https://jws-library.one). [That URL now says: “This…
eBay Defeats Contributory Copyright Claim–Lee v. SBS
Lee is enforcing music copyrights against karaoke machine makers that allegedly include copyrighted songs. He sent numerous NOCIs to eBay targeting the machines. eBay apparently honored the NOCIs. However, Lee really wanted staydowns, which eBay did not do. Lee claims…
Large Roundup of Section 230 Rulings
This blog post rounds up nearly 20 Section 230 cases (and adjacent cases), mostly from the past four months, that for whatever reason I didn’t cover in a standalone blog post. Section 230’s effects are waning overall, but this post…