As discussed in an earlier post, Valancourt Books, a small, on-demand publisher, filed suit against the Copyright Office and the Department of Justice and argued that the Office’s demand for physical copies of published books is unconstitutional. Valancourt alleged that the authority granted by §407 of the Copyright Act to demand the copies (or be fined) is a violation of ...
Last February, the U.S. Copyright Office rejected the registration application filed by Stephen Thaler for a visual work entitled “A Recent Entrance to Paradise.” Thaler averred that the image was generated by an AI he designed called “Creativity Machine,” and on that basis, the Office affirmed the longstanding doctrine that copyright rights only attach to works of human authorship. In ...
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 ...
On July 23, the District Court for the District of Columbia denied publisher Valancourt’s claims that the requirement to provide deposit copies of U.S. published works to the Library of Congress constitutes an unlawful taking under the Fifth Amendment and/or an infringement of speech under the First Amendment. Although many legal experts are likely to agree with the outcome, some ...
On April 16, Senator Udall (NM) wrote a letter asking the U.S. Copyright Office to provide Congress with guidance on the role of libraries and the potential need to expand (within the law) digital lending during national emergencies. More specifically, the senator asked the Office to comment on the National Emergency Library (NEL) launched by the Internet Archive (IA) on ...
