The Copyright Claims Board Decides its First Case — Less than a year after the copyright small claims tribunal was created from scratch, it has issued its first final determination. Jonathan Bailey takes a detailed look at the decision at PlagiarismToday, calling it “an excellent illustration of what the CCB is meant to be used for and the likely direction it will head in future judgments.”
A Tale of Black Resistance through Collage Artwork — “Every year, the Copyright Office takes this opportunity to recognize the impact of Black artists and their creations as well as the significant role that the copyright system plays in protecting them. As part of this year’s celebration, Office staff sat down with Dakarai Akil, a dynamic, Los Angeles-based collage artist, for a conversation about collage art, creative process, identity, and Black resistance. Akil has engaged with the copyright system, and over the span of his career, he self-published three art books and had his work published in The New York Times, Wired Magazine, and Readers Digest.”
Generative Artificial Intelligence and Copyright Law [PDF] — The Congressional Research Service, an excellent resource not just for the legislative branch but the general public as well, recently published this brief but insightful overview of the key copyright issues raised by generative AI.
Circuit Split on Larger Copyright Damages Invites Forum Shopping — “The Second Circuit ruled in 2020 that the Copyright Act’s statute of limitations prevents plaintiffs from seeking damages for infringement that occurred more than three years before the lawsuit was filed. But the Ninth Circuit found in 2022 that the limitation doesn’t bar a plaintiff from seeking damages from infringement before that time frame. The Eleventh Circuit is now the only other appeals court to address the issue—siding with the Ninth Circuit.”
‘Photoguard’ Stops Your Pictures Being Manipulated by AI — “A team of researchers led by computer professor Aleksander Madry at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has developed a program called ‘Photoguard’ which denies AI the ability to manipulate an individual’s photos convincingly. In a paper published last month, the research team showed how Photoguard can ‘immunize’ photos against AI edits. The program uses data poisoning techniques to disturb pixels within a photo to create invisible noise in an image. This essentially renders AI art generators incapable of generating realistic deepfakes based on the photos that it system has been fed and trained on.”