ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC Battle “Freemium” — “What’s Locast? It’s a digital app that streams over-the-air television stations. Meaning, if a cord-cutter wanted to watch last night’s Oscars on ABC and didn’t have an ol’ rabbit ears antenna handy, this individual could go to Locast.org and sign up to see the local affiliate retransmitted online. It’s free. Well, sorta. A wrinkle may soon play a major role in an important copyright case. Broadcasters are now preparing to ask a federal judge for a sweeping legal victory against Locast. In July 2019, ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC filed a lawsuit over Locast. Nodding to a big Supreme Court decision a few years earlier, the complaint stated, ‘Locast is simply Aereo 2.0, a business built on illegally using broadcaster content.'”
World Book Day: Publishers Call for Canada’s Copyright Law To Be Fixed — “In the flurry of international recognition days in April—Earth Day (Thursday, April 22); World Book and Copyright Day (Friday, April 23); World Intellectual Property Day (Monday, April 26)—Canada’s writing and publishing industries have issued a statement, ‘calling on the federal government in Ottawa to fix Canada’s copyright law to address the systemic exploitation of creators’ and publishers’ works by educational institutions.’â€
YouTube TV removed from Roku channel store amid Google contract dispute — “These spats happen regularly between Pay-TV providers and linear TV networks. But in the digital era, this is one of the rare times in which consumers will have a major streaming network removed from their platform’s channel store due to a breakdown in negotiations.”
Instagram is working on creator shops and a ‘branded content marketplace’ for influencers — “Creator Shops would be an extension of the company’s existing shopping features, which allows businesses to sell products. ‘We see a lot of creators setting up shops too, and one part of being a content creator business model is you create great content, and then you can sell stuff, and so having creator shops is awesome,’ Zuckerberg said.”
The Second Circuit is teeing up what could be the first decision to consider the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in Google v. Oracle on the application of the fair use doctrine. This week, it called for briefing “solely addressing the impact, if any” of the decision on the appropriate disposition of the appeal in Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith.