Who Is the Bad Copyright Friend? (Guest Column) — “Are you #TeamDawn or #TeamSonya? The internet was divided into warring camps in light of the viral New York Times Magazine article “Who Is the Bad Art Friend?†by Robert Kolker. It’s a tale as old as time: two writers locked in a bitter legal dispute over a short story inspired by Facebook posts about kidney donation.”
Should Copyright Exceptions Apply to AI Mined Data? And Other Questions Raised Under the UKIPO Consultation on Artificial Intelligence and Copyright and Patents — “Last Friday, the UK’s Intellectual Property Office launched a consultation entitled ‘Artificial Intelligence and IP: copyright and patents’, which closes 11:45pm on 7 January 2022 (London Time). The consultation forms part of the UK government’s ‘National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Strategy’, which followed the government’s 2017 Industrial Strategy publication. The aim of the consultation is to determine the right incentives for Artificial Intelligence development and innovation, while continuing to promote human creativity and innovation.”
Apple Class Action Suit Reprises the “Digital First Sale†Conversation — “Perzanowski and others argue that a ‘digital first sale’ doctrine would be a way of, ‘Restoring genuine ownership,’ and allege that the copyright owners ‘don’t like it because it creates pressure and competition.’ Neither statement is quite true. In answer to the second statement, as the courts held in the ReDigi case, allowing a trade at internet scale in ‘used’ digital works would not create a secondary competitive market but rather an alternative primary market in which used-goods prices are exchanged for material that is ‘used’ in name only.”
Spain adopts EU copyright law, paving way for Google News to return — “The EU legislation, which must be adopted by all member states, requires platforms such as Google, Facebook and others to share revenue with publishers but it also removes the collective fee and allows them to reach individual or group agreements with publishers. Google said it wanted to bring its news services back to Spain but would closely analyse the law before making any firm commitment.”
Apple to pay US$1.9 million to online Chinese publisher for copyright infringement in App Store — “That ruling in favour of the Tianjin subsidiary of COL Digital Publishing Group, which has been locked in a legal battle with Apple for a decade, found that several unnamed apps on the US firm’s online App Store in mainland China published unlicensed content, including popular novels, that can only be distributed by the online publisher, according to a report by national newspaper the China Securities Journal.”