Information wants to be free, the saying goes, but information also wants to be expensive. But which parts end up being free and which parts end up being expensive can get pretty complicated. With so much content flooding through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and the rest of the online platforms, tracking down who owns what (and how much it’s worth) has turned into one of the central questions of the internet. The answer to that question is copyright — specifically, who holds it and why, as mediated by automated systems like Content ID and a seemingly unending fight between platforms and content companies. This is where we navigate those issues, inside and outside the big platforms, the good systems and bad systems alike. If you’ve ever wondered how much a tweet is worth or why your sing-along YouTube videos keep getting taken down, this is the place to find out.
Variety reports on why early uploads of Stephen Colbert’s post-The Late Show endeavor were pulled, citing copyright complaints from Paramount/CBS. A statement from the company says it was because it financed and produced the episode with Colbert, which was eventually published on his YouTube channel, but it has now “decided to waive further enforcement of this standard industry practice until additional review.”
A judge awarded Penguin Random House, Macmillan, HarperCollins, and other major publishers with the judgment after Anna’s Archive — an open-source library and pirate activist group — didn’t respond to their copyright lawsuit.
Just like with the $322 million judgment awarded to Spotify and major music labels, collecting damages from anonymous online operators isn’t easy.
Yuga Labs, the creator of the now-depreciated line of NFTs, settled its lawsuit against artists Ryder Ripps and Jeremy Cahen, who were accused of launching a copycat RR/BAYC NFT collection, as reported by CoinDesk.
The parties settled to avoid a trial after a court reversed Yuga Labs’ $9 million win last year.
Murphy Campbell’s nightmare isn’t over yet. Distributor Vydia has rescinded its claims to her YouTube videos. But her Facebook and Instagram posts about the incident have been removed for copyright infringement. Neither Meta nor Vydia have responded to a request for comment, but it’s unclear what could possibly have been infringing in this video (reposted by United Musicians & Allied Workers).
Murphy Campbell plays public domain ballads, but YouTube accepted the copyright claim anyway.
Cookie’s Bustle is an extremely weird PC game released in 1999. And for reasons no one understands, a person by the name Brandon White, through their company Graceware, has been trying to erase all trace of it through non-stop copyright claims. But the VGHF got its lawyers involved and has finally put an end to Graceware’s shenanigans.
We are happy to report that after bringing these facts to Ukie’s attention, Ukie has suspended takedowns for Cookie’s Bustle on behalf of Graceware, SL. This is a big victory for the gaming community, hopefully bringing an end to a rights-squatting campaign that has dragged on for years.
[Video Game History Foundation]
Otherwise, the TikTok parent will face “immediate litigation” for copyright infringement of Netflix’s Stranger Things, KPop Demon Hunters, Squid Game, and Bridgerton franchises:
“Seedance acts as a high-speed piracy engine, generating mass quantities of unauthorized derivative works utilizing Netflix’s iconic characters, worlds, and scripted narratives. Netflix will not stand by and watch ByteDance treat our valued IP as free, public domain clip art.”
Disney, Paramount, and Hollywood trade groups are equally concerned.
Fed up with increasing subscription prices, viewers embrace rogue streaming boxes.
A pair of bipartisan lawmakers introduced the Transparency and Responsibility for Artificial Intelligence Networks (TRAIN) Act in the House, letting copyright holders see if AI models were trained on their work. It’s already been introduced in the Senate, and counts the Recording Industry Association of America and SAG-AFTRA among its endorsers.
[Congresswoman Madeleine Dean]
In a blog post, the nonprofit says it has “significant reservations” about systems that require AI companies to pay to train on their content, stating that they “could become new concentrations of power, with the ability to dictate how we experience the web.”
Despite its concerns, the Creative Commons recently partnered with the RSL Collective to allow creators to collect “contributions” from AI companies, as it aims to “infuse concepts of reciprocity in standards that are ready for adoption.”
According to FlatpanelsHD and TheWalkmanblog, Sony has trademarked “True RGB” in Japan and Canada. It’s almost certainly for the RGB TV technology announced earlier this year to compete with similar RGB tech from Hisense, TCL, and Samsung shown in 2025.
Since a dupe is an unaffiliated similar product (or even unauthorized copy), this registration — first reported by The Fashion Law — is a real doozy. Is this a legal innovation in shutting down dupes of Lululemon’s products, or is it a recursive marketing stunt?
It’s a great time to reread Mia Sato on the wild world of dupes and the increasingly tangled intellectual property regime around them.
Or would you? Smucker’s is accusing Trader Joe’s of ripping off its Uncrustables and creating “copycats” that infringe on the shape of the sandwiches and packaging. Trader Joe’s whole thing is that they make in-house versions of popular products — not just food but also things like skincare. But as I’ve written, the legal status of dupes is more complicated than it might seem.
The only human-made element behind Xania Monet’s act appear to be the lyrics.
Last year, the Archive lost an appeal in its ebook lending case, and now it has settled the lawsuit over its Great 78 Project:
The Internet Archive’s blog simply says:
As noted in the recent court filings in UMG Recordings, Inc. v. Internet Archive, both parties have advised the Court that the matter has been settled. The parties have reached a confidential resolution of all claims and will have no further public comment on this matter.
As legal wrangling over generative AI and copyright continues, ElevenLabs has launched its latest AI audio product with Eleven Music. There are many AI music generators out there, but the company claims this one “is cleared for nearly all commercial uses, from film and television to podcasts and social media videos, and from advertisements to gaming.”
However, except for podcasts, most of those uses are banned for most listed service plans.
In the Washington Post, Joseph Menn reports on a 25th anniversary reunion for some of the people behind Napster, as they reflected on how it all played out, and the impact it’s had on tech companies dealing with the threat of regulation.
Lawyer and venture capitalist Hank Barry, Napster’s former CEO, recalled famed music executive Quincy Jones asking him whether a particular Dizzy Gillespie track he had sought for years was available over Napster. Amazed that it was, Jones brokered peace talks with the industry, though they didn’t work out.
Turns out copyright law in music is special — and the record labels are bringing out the big guns.
Meta and Anthropic defended AI training as fair use, but with major caveats.
The Danish government is proposing a copyright law amendment to give citizens ownership rights to their body, facial features, and voice, theoretically allowing them to demand companies to remove any AI-generated content that uses their likeness and fight for compensation.
“Human beings can be run through the digital copy machine and be misused for all sorts of purposes, and I’m not willing to accept that,” said Danish culture minister Jakob Engel-Schmidt.
Several writers have launched a lawsuit against Microsoft over claims it used a collection of nearly 200,000 pirated books to train its Megatron artificial intelligence model to respond to user prompts. Judges have shot down similar cases that authors raised against Meta and Anthropic this week — perhaps the third time’s the charm?
The dispute between Apple and Optis Wireless Technology is headed for its third trial after an appeals court threw out a 2021 jury verdict due to faulty jury instructions, Reuters reports. The case is based on Optis’ accusation that Apple infringed on its patents for LTE standard-essential technology. The damages award has already been retried once after a judge said the jury that awarded $506 million to Optis hadn’t considered the reasonableness of the amount.
Astute AI copyright observer Michael Weinberg raises some good questions about the Common Pile, an AI training dataset billed as being composed of only “openly licensed text”:
On one hand, this is an interesting effort to build a new type of training dataset that illustrates how even the “easy” parts of this process are actually hard. On the other hand, I worry that some people read “openly licensed training dataset” as the equivalent of (or very close to) “LLM free of copyright issues.”
[michaelweinberg.org]
The head of the AI video platform on Hollywood, copyright, and the future of filmmaking.
