By , March 15, 2019.

‘Star Trek’/Dr. Seuss Mashup Deemed Copyright Fair Use by Judge— The decision, involving a novelty book that combines Seussian style rhymes and artwork with Trekkie characters and other elements, distinguished the Federal Circuit’s Oracle v Google decision and analogized to the Second Circuit’s decision involving a Naked Gun 33 1/3 promotional poster that parodied Annie Liebowitz’s famous portrait of a pregnant Demi Moore to find the force was strong with fair use.

The Fourth Estate Decision and Copyright Registration — US Copyright Office General Counsel Regan Smith dives into the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Fourth Estate Public Benefit v Wall-street.com, which held that the Copyright Act requires copyright owners to have a registration certificate from the Copyright Office (or have had their application refused by the Office) before filing suit for infringment. Smith also details the efforts the Office is taking to reduce the time it takes to process registration applications.

Music Community Calls For Building A Better Digital Attribution And Credits System — SAG-AFTRA, A2IM, RIAA, and Artist Rights Alliance this week announced a collaboration to build more robust digital attribution and credits, saying “Attribution recognizes artistic achievement, helps creators connect, collaborate, and appreciate each other’s work, opens up new pathways for fans to trace artistic influences and find new music, and aids accuracy in the digital royalty economy.”

In Appeal of Russian Stream-Ripper Ruling, RIAA Says Court Gave ‘Carte Blanche to Internet Pirates’ — The labels are appealing a decision that held a pair of Russian “stream ripping” sites, which used a US domain name and enabled US users to infringe US copyrights through a US service (YouTube) could not be haled into a US court.

Facial recognition’s ‘dirty little secret’: Millions of online photos scraped without consent — The “without consent” here refers to the people who were the subjects of the photos. The copyright owners of the photos themselves already (perhaps inadverdantly) gave consent for their photos to be used to train surveillance systems by releasing them under Creative Commons licenses.