The small claim tribunal, the Copyright Claims Board, opened its virtual doors yesterday, and by EOD, about a dozen claims were on the docket. A glance at the named defendants reveals a list of commercial users who allegedly infringed protected works, which is no surprise and probably good news. I say it’s no surprise because, despite the fearmongering about aggressive ...
Rep. Mondaire Jones (NY), along with co-sponsor Rep. Victoria Spartz (IN) introduced a bill in February called the Freedom to Repair Act. Seeking to remedy a specific, unintended consequence of one part of the Copyright Act, the bill overreaches so dramatically that it would effectively legalize piracy of creative works. If Congress wants to address unfair practices among certain manufacturers ...
“Defcad stands against artificial scarcity, intellectual property, copyright, patentable objects, and regulation in all its forms.” – Cody Wilson, Promo Video, 2013 – In 2012, when this blog was new, I wrote a short piece about Cody Wilson’s vision to combine Second Amendment maximalism with tech-utopianism to ensure that every citizen has even easier access to firearms than we do ...
In Part I, I wrote that I hope the Court will find that AWF’s central argument fails on the “transformativeness” question presented and that it will reaffirm that this part of the fair use factor one inquiry must find at least some evidence of commentary upon the original work. Warhol’s Prince Series does not comment upon the photograph used, which ...
Copyright watchers were surprised when the Supreme Court granted Andy Warhol Foundation’s (AWF) petition for certiorari in its case against photographer Lynn Goldsmith. For deeper background, see older posts, but this is the dispute over Andy Warhol’s “Prince Series” silkscreen images of rock legend Prince made in 1984 using Goldsmith’s unpublished 1981 portrait photograph as a reference image. In March ...
