Thus ends the 12th Annual Fair Use Week, and after the Warhol decision, it must be asked whether the parties who invented this holy week of the copyleft intend to continue the farce much longer. As a refresher, the fair use doctrine has been part of the U.S. Copyright Act since 1976 and a subject of judge-made law since at ...

When Internet Archive lost resoundingly in the Hachette (book publishers) case, the court rejected its cockamamie legal theory called controlled digital lending (CDL). Then, when a group of record labels (UMG et al.) filed suit against IA for infringing reproduction, distribution, and performance of sound recordings, I wrote at the time that there’s no way IA has an unfounded theory ...

As the Super Bowl approached and passed, it seemed that one faction of Americans was accusing Taylor Swift of practicing witchcraft on the NFL while another was slagging her for the carbon output of her private jet—reportedly about 8,300 tonnes of CO2e in 2022. And although it is fair to expect owners of private aircraft to fly responsibly, I must ...

Democracy dies in darkness according to the motto of the Washington Post, and this is, of course, just one of many phrases reciting the axiomatic theme that credible and responsibly reported information is the blood of a democratic society like the United States. If true, then why has the “information age” brought democracy itself to the brink of destruction?  There ...

On Wednesday, January 31, the Senate Judiciary Committee presided over a dramatic hearing entitled Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis. The gallery was filled with family members representing young victims of sexual exploitation, drug-related deaths, and adverse mental health effects of social media that can lead to chronic illness and suicide. The witnesses who provided testimony and ...

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