In March, Senators Durbin and Cassidy introduced the INFORM Consumers Act, legislation meant to provide us with greater transparency when shopping through large online marketplaces, which is to say Amazon. In a co-authored editorial in Roll Call, the senators state: It is well documented that third parties are selling massive amounts of counterfeit, stolen and unsafe consumer products on online ...
This week, the SDNY denied the motion to dismiss requested by Donald J. Trump et al in the copyright suit filed by singer/songwriter Eddy Grant. The complaint stems from the unlicensed use of Grant’s song “Electric Avenue” which was synched with an animated, political video satirizing then candidate Joe Biden in 2020. The video was distributed via social media, including ...
On September 17, a California District Court dismissed the complaint in Hunley et al v. Instagram, in which the plaintiff class accused the Facebook-owned social platform of “encouraging, inducing, and facilitating third parties to commit widespread copyright infringement” by means of the company’s promotion of its embedding tools. Through Instagram’s marketing the ability for third parties to display images by means ...
In the continuing saga of state actors getting away with copyright infringement, let’s look at the story of author/publisher Michael Bynum and his book about the legendary “12th Man” of the Texas A&M University (TAMU) football team. The tale, which has been passed down through generations of Aggies and other football fans, describes the “Dixie Classic” of 1922, when the ...
And it’s a shame that justice will not be the basis on which it is corrected. If it ever is. Recently, the U.S. Copyright Office published its report on copyright infringement by states and state actors in response to the present circumstance whereby states are immunized against litigation for unlicensed use of protected works. As the Supreme Court held in ...
