Feel Like Screaming? Google Has a New Smartphone Filter That Turns You Into Munch’s ‘Scream’ and Other Famous Artworks — Last year’s AI and copyright hypotheticals are today’s apps. (Though the works in this particular app appear to all be in the public domain, so no actual copyright issues here).
Minister’s Widow Can Get Attorneys’ Fees in Ninth Circuit Copyright Case — An issue of first impression for the Ninth Circuit: whether the Copyright Act’s attorney’s fees provision applies to declaratory judgment actions. The court held it does, and remanded to determine whether the copyright owner here can get attorneys fees after defeating a claim of copyright abandonment.
Carnegie Mellon University Libraries Create Remote Book Delivery — “CMU Libraries’ Technical Services team collaborated with the Research and Academic Services department to implement the new service, delivering books to faculty and graduate students. The staff built workflows to check the availability of print material online from approved vendors and to order and process the material, then worked to ensure that patrons’ information is securely acquired so that books can be delivered to their home addresses. Finally, the Technical Services staff developed a checklist for each order to track the book from the original request to the delivery date. Only vendors, including Amazon and ABEBooks, that are willing to ship directly to students can be considered.”
Movie & TV Giants Obtain Court Injunction to Shut Down Nitro TV — Torrentfreak reports, “A coalition of entertainment companies headed up by Universal, Paramount, Columbia, Disney and Amazon has obtained an injunction to shut down ‘pirate’ IPTV service Nitro TV. A court in California has ordered all individuals acting in concert or participation with the service to stop infringing the companies’ copyrights, including by disabling its domains.” From the court decision: “the court must pay particular regard for the public consequences in employing the extraordinary remedy of injunction. The public has a significant interest in the lawful enforcement of United States copyright laws. Conversely, Defendant’s alleged copyright infringement does not offer any lawful benefit to the public. Defendant has offered no lawful personal interest for the Court to consider. Thus, the public interest is best served by an injunction of Nitro TV.” (Internal citations and quotations omitted).
Sohm v. Scholastic, Inc. (2d Cir) [PDF] — In a decision published Tuesday, the Second Circuit joined the Ninth Circuit in holding that the registration of a compilation of photographs by someone who holds the rights to the individual works also effectively registers the underlying individual photos where the compilation does not list the individual authors of the individual photos.