A common disparagement of copyright advocacy is that it is anti-technology. Despite overwhelming evidence that professional creators are early adopters of new technlogical developements, the talking point persists that enforcing the rights of creators can only “stifle innovation.” This “Luddite” critique of copyright rights was used to defend the predatory models of social and streaming platforms (and defend outright piracy), ...

After Internet Archive (IA) lost its copyright infringement suit with major publishers this week, the organization wasted no time alleging that great harm has been done to society. As if it had the posts ready to go, IA alleged that research itself was in peril and even went so far as to shamelessly post on X that works by Orwell ...

IA asks this Court to bless the large scale copying and distribution of copyrighted books without permission from or payment to the Publishers or authors. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday affirmed that Internet Archive’s digital book lending model controlled digital lending (CDL) is not permitted by copyright law, including under the fair use exception. The outcome is a ...

As mentioned in my last post about the record labels’ lawsuits against GAI companies Suno and Udio, I will generally focus on the latter case. Both cases are almost identical, but because UMG et al. v. Ucharted Labs Inc. is at the SDNY (in the Second Circuit), those proceedings may be followed by other courts with considerably less copyright law ...

A little-known Senate resolution called the Local Radio Freedom Act (LRFA) is a clever move by whoever thought of it. It has no force of law but instead asks Congress to sign a pledge to enshrine an unfair and unfounded policy whereby terrestrial radio broadcasters shall never pay royalties to musical artists. Why? Because that’s how it’s always been. In ...

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