Why I Oppose the California Journalism Protection Act (the Short Version)
I recently wrote a lengthy blog post explaining the many problems with the California Journalism Protection Act (JCPA), AB 886. I submitted a letter of opposition to the Senate Judiciary Committee with just some quotable lowlights. My letter: __ CJPA…
Revisiting Bananas, Duct Tape, Walls, & Copyright–Morford v. Cattelan
Among all of the fruits, bananas play an especially important role in copyright jurisprudence. For example, we must resolve when duct-taping a banana to a wall infringes copyright. The short answer should be “never.” That’s not exactly the answer a…
California’s Proposed Fix to the Journalism Crisis Is Unconstitutional and Worse Than Socialism (Comments on the California Journalism Protection Act, CJPA)
The California legislature is competing with states like Florida and Texas to see who can pass laws will be more devastating to the Internet. California’s latest entry into this Internet death-spiral is the California Journalism Protection Act (CJPA, AB 886)….
U.S. Supreme Court Vindicates Photographer But Destabilizes Fair Use — Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith (Guest Blog Post)
[Eric’s note: this is the post you’ve been waiting for: Prof. Ochoa’s definitive analysis of the Supreme Court’s Warhol opinion. This post is 11,000+ words long, so you may want to block out some time to enjoy this properly.] By…
How Can AI Models Legally Obtain Training Data?–Doe 1 v. GitHub (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Kieran McCarthy Doe 1 v. GitHub, Inc. is one of the first major class-action lawsuits to dive into questions of online collection of “public data” and generative AI training data sets. Given the importance of generative AI…
Class Certification Denied Over Rightsowners’ Demands for Content ID Access–Schneider v. YouTube
The court summarizes the case: “plaintiffs allege that YouTube has violated the copyright laws by withholding broad access to Content ID….Plaintiffs also allege that YouTube automatically strips metadata out of uploaded videos, including copyright management information (CMI), which makes it…
Ill-Advised Attempt to Blow Up the DMCA Online Safe Harbors Unsurprisingly Fails–Athos v. YouTube
Athos owns the copyrights to many classic Mexican films. Users regularly upload its film clips to YouTube. These uploads have irritated Athos since 2014. However, Athos rejected YouTube’s fast-lane options for copyright owners (such as the Copyright Match Tool, Content…
DMCA 512(c) Safe Harbor Doesn’t Apply to Photo Embedding–Great Bowery v. Best Little Sites
This case involves Annie Leibovitz photos, represented by licensing and enforcement agency Trunk Archive. Allegedly, users of comicbookmovie.com (CBM) embedded the Leibovitz photos into the site by linking to the images hosted on third-party sites. Once CBM learned of the…
Surprise! Another 512(f) Claim Fails–Bored Ape Yacht Club v. Ripps
This is another lawsuit involving the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs. (Q: why are the apes so bored? A: because they spend so much time in court proceedings). In this lawsuit, BAYC sued an “appropriation artist,” Ripps, who sought…
Services Aren’t Liable for Ignoring the DMCA’s 512(g) Counternotification Procedures–Hopson v. Google
This case involves a UGC anime site called Gelbooru, run by Hopson. Rightsowners sent DMCA takedown notices targeting the site to Google. (Lumen has many takedown notices containing the word “Gelbooru”). Google stripped out the notices’ identifying information and forwarded…