‘Star Trek,’ Dr. Seuss Mashup Dispute Ends After 5-Year Legal Journey — The legal dispute involving an unauthorized “mashup” that told a Star Trek story using Dr. Seuss imagery and literary style has settled, following a December 2020 ruling from the 9th Circuit that the defendant’s copying is not excused by fair use.
RIAA Secures ‘Victory’ Against YouTube Rippers and Seeks $82 Million in Damages — The result comes from the court ordering default judgment against the streamripping site operators as a sanction for repeatedly refusing to comply with discovery orders. The litigation previously took a trip to the Fourth Circuit, which reversed an earlier decision dismissing the case on personal jurisdiction grounds.
New Crowdsourcing Campaign Focuses on Early Copyright Records — “By the People, the Library of Congress’ crowdsourcing program, and the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, in consultation with the U.S. Copyright Office, have launched a new crowdsourcing transcription campaign, ‘American Creativity: Early Copyright Title Pages.’ We invite the public to help make the Library’s collections more accessible by transcribing over 95,000 title pages from the earliest printed works in the United States. From 1790 through 1870, authors registered copyright claims by completing a form at the local federal district court, paying a fee, and depositing of a printed title page with the court clerk. In 1870, with the passage of the second general revision to the Copyright Act, copyright registration was centralized in the Library of Congress, and the earlier records were ordered to be transferred to the Library. In 2020, the Library began digitizing the collection.”
Algorithms shouldn’t be protected by Section 230, Facebook whistleblower tells Senate — Ars Technica reports on Tuesday’s testimony by Frances Haugen before the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security. During her testimony, the whistleblower and former Facebook product manager addressed the harms caused by the site, specifically the prevalence of algorithms and artificial intelligence deployed to increase engagement. Haugen recommended a suite of changes to address these harms, “including a Section 230 overhaul that would hold the social media giant responsible for its algorithms that promote content based on the engagement it receives in users’ news feeds.”
With the IATSE strike vote, film and TV crews are saying what is on a lot of other workers’ minds — “Why the IATSE strike vote is so important? Because most Americans are below-the-line workers. Film and television crews are giving voice to universal truths: People can love to work and still expect a lunch break. They can feel fortunate to be in their chosen industry and still demand to be fairly compensated. They can dedicate themselves to excellence on the job and still expect to have time to live their lives outside work. Not just on film and television sets, but everywhere.”