Matt Herron, documentary photographer and adventurer, dies while flying glider — “Matt Herron never set out to be a photojournalist in the detached and objective tradition. What he set out to do was march 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery in support of Black voting rights in 1965. And he did it moving backward in order to photograph his fellow marchers.”
Post-Open Source — A critique of the free software and open source movements from an author who shares many of their goals. Well worth a read, and implicit in it is the important role copyright plays beyond simply commercializing creative works—as this piece reveals, authors also want some say in how their work is used (or not used) by others.
Google Beats Song Lyric Scraping Lawsuit — The Hollywood Reporter‘s Eriq Gardner reports, “Google may have been caught ‘redhanded,’ but a federal judge rules that Genius hasn’t alleged any viable claims not be preempted by copyright law.”
Easier Copyright Registration Coming for Blogs and Social Media Posts — The National Law Review reports, “Starting this month, social media influencers and other authors of online content can take advantage of a new group copyright registration option for short online works such as blog entries, social media posts and web articles. Authors could even register their own comments to a social post as separate copyrightable works in certain situations.” Read the final rule here.
Mango v. Buzzfeed (2nd Circuit) [PDF] — This week, the Second Circuit, in an issue of first impression, held that liability for removing copyright management information under 17 USC § 1202(b) does not require “proof that a defendant knew, or had reasonable grounds to know, that its conduct would lead to future, third-party infringement.” It is sufficient to show that removal concealed infringement by the defendant itself.