In Justice Kagan’s blistering dissent in AWF v. Goldsmith, she stated the following: If Warhol had used Goldsmith’s photo to comment on or critique Goldsmith’s photo, he might have availed himself of that factor’s benefit (though why anyone would be interested in that work is mysterious). [Emphasis added] Kagan’s sweeping view that she could not imagine why there would be ...
In this Court, the sole question presented is whether the first fair use factor, “the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes,” §107(1), weighs in favor of AWF’s recent commercial licensing to Condé Nast. Although the consideration in Andy Warhol Foundation v. Lynn Goldsmith is narrowly ...
Just as it is folly to anthropomorphize computers and robots, it is also unhelpful to discuss the implications of generative AI in copyright law by analogizing machines to authors.[1] In 2019, I explored the idea that “machine learning” could be analogous to human reading if the human happens to have an eidetic memory. But this was a thought exercise, and ...
On March 24, the court in Hachette et al. v. Internet Archive wholly rejected IA’s fair use defense constructed on the theory called Controlled Digital Lending (CDL). Prior to and since that ruling, various parties have tried to characterize this case as an attack by the publishers against the core function of libraries, alleging that libraries either already depend, or ...
With the court’s unequivocal decision in Hachette et al. v. Internet Archive, and the continued failure of ebook legislation in various states, it is time for policymakers and librarians to understand the reason why this two-pronged campaign against copyright rights in ebooks is losing—because the academics, organizations, and lobbyists behind the effort are lying. Yes, that’s a big accusation to ...
