Ninth Circuit Reaffirms the “Server Test” for Direct Infringement of the Public Display Right — Hunley v. Instagram, LLC (Guest Blog Post)
By Guest Blogger Tyler Ochoa Recently, the Ninth Circuit reaffirmed what has become known as the “server test”: in order to be held directly liable for violating the public display right, the alleged infringer must have a fixed “copy” of…
Copyright Owner Can Proceed with Vicarious Infringement Claim Against eBay–Okolita v. eBay
Ellen Okolita developed bird costumes for children, took photos of her children wearing the costumes, and used the photos to sell about 8,000 costumes on Etsy (at her “Tree and Vine” store). Read a profile of her. (Sorry, I’m not…
Ninth Circuit Highlights the Messy Law of Contributory Trademark Infringement Online–YYGM v. RedBubble
Redbubble provides an online marketplace for print-on-demand items. Unlike other print-on-demand vendors, Redbubble outsources everything but the marketing and payment processing functions. Third-party user-merchants upload the images; third-party contract manufacturers and other vendors make and ship the ordered items. This…
Contractual Control over Information Goods after ML Genius v. Google (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Prof. Guy Rub, The Ohio State University Michael E. Moritz College of Law The copyright – contract tension Stewart Brand famously said that information wants to be free. We know, however, that many laws limit free access…
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…