By , June 21, 2023.

In taking on the concept of “transformative use” for the first time in just shy of thirty years, the Supreme Court’s decision in Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith provides a critical recalibration of the doctrine, restoring the importance of “justification” to transformative use.1Although the more recent Google v. Oracle decision addresses transformative use within its broader discussion of fair use, the Court’s treatment was superficial—little more than a rote recitation of the standard articulated in Campbell along with its application to the specific facts of the case. The decision thus tethers fair use closer to the overall purpose of copyright.

Justification has long underlied transformative use. It was central to the Court’s holding in its previous transformative use decision, Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, serving as the dividing line between favorable-to-fair-use parody and unfavorable-to-fair-use satire. As the Court said there, “Parody needs to mimic an original to make its point, and so has some claim to use the creation of its victim’s (or collective victims’) imagination, whereas satire can stand on its own two feet and so requires justification for the very act of borrowing.”2Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569, 580-581 (1994). The idea has surfaced in lower court decisions since then, such as Authors Guild v. Google, where Judge Leval wrote,

[T]he would-be fair user of another’s work must have justification for the taking. A secondary author is not necessarily at liberty to make wholesale takings of the original author’s expression merely because of how well the original author’s expression would convey the secondary author’s different message. Among the best recognized justifications for copying from another’s work is to provide comment on it or criticism of it. A taking from another author’s work for the purpose of making points that have no bearing on the original may well be fair use, but the taker would need to show a justification.3Authors Guild v. Google, Inc., 804 F.3d 202, 215 (2d Cir. 2015).

But many have noted that since Campbell, transformative use has caused fair use to grow overly expansive and unbalanced.4See, e.g., Jane Ginsburg, Fair Use in the United States: Transformed, Deformed, Reformed? 2020 Sing. J. Legal Stud. 265 (2020); Patricia Cohen, Photographers Band Together to Protect Work in ‘Fair Use’ Cases, New York Times, Feb. 21, 2014; Hearing on Fair Use, Statement of June Besek, House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet (Jan. 28, 2014). At the same time, a finding by courts of transformativeness has increasingly become dispositive, with one researcher finding that, in recent fair use decisions, a finding of transformativeness is correlated with a finding of fair use 94% of the time.5Jiarui Liu, An Empirical Study of Transformative Use in Copyright Law, 22 Stan. Tech. L. Rev. 163 (2019).

The concern about an unbalanced fair use doctrine is that it will undermine the goals of copyright itself.

Generally speaking, the purpose of copyright is advanced by, well, copyright. The exclusive, divisible, and marketable rights protected under copyright law facilitate a market for expressive works that encourages and rewards authorship, creativity, and innovation. The Supreme Court has previously explained how this works by saying,

The economic philosophy behind the Copyright Clause is the conviction that encouragement of individual effort by personal gain is the best way to advance public welfare through the talents of authors and inventors. Accordingly, copyright law celebrates the profit motive, recognizing that the incentive to profit from the exploitation of copyrights will redound to the public benefit by resulting in the proliferation of knowledge. The profit motive is the engine that ensures the progress of science.6Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186, 212 n.18 (2003) (cleaned up).

Fair use is an exception to these exclusive rights. The Warhol Court notes that fair use “permits courts to avoid rigid application of the copyright statute when, on occasion, it would stifle the very creativity which that law is designed to foster.” Indeed, the doctrine has long been described as a reinforcement of copyright’s very purpose. In his foundational study of fair use that prefaced the 1976 Copyright Act revision effort, Alan Latman wrote, “It has often been stated that a certain degree of latitude for the users of copyrighted works is indispensable for the ‘Progress of Science and useful Arts.'”7Alan Latman, Fair Use of Copyrighted Works, pg. 7, Copyright Law Revision Study No. 14, US Copyright Office (1958). Campbell reiterated this principle, saying, “From the infancy of copyright protection, some opportunity for fair use of copyrighted materials has been thought necessary to fulfill copyright’s very purpose, ‘[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts. . . .'”8Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, 510 US 569, 575 (1994).

An astute reader will recognize a potential paradox here: the purpose of copyright is served both by protecting expression against copying and by permitting expression to be copied. How do courts make sense of this seeming incongruity?

Justification.

The Warhol Court explains the role of justification in the first fair use factor. The task for courts there is to assess “whether and to what extent the use at issue has a purpose or character different from the original.” The majority identified two important points to keep in mind: first, “the fact that a use is commercial as opposed to nonprofit is an additional ‘element of the first factor,'” and second, of relevance here, the first factor relates to “the justification for the use.” It elaborated, “In a broad sense, a use that has a distinct purpose is justified because it furthers the goal of copyright, namely, to promote the progress of science and the arts, without diminishing the incentive to create.” And, “In a narrower sense, a use may be justified because copying is reasonably necessary to achieve the user’s new purpose.”

Congress has provided courts with an illustrative list of those uses which are justified in the broad sense in § 107: “criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research.” Courts can further assess the fairness of a particular use by considering justification in the narrow sense; that is, asking to what extent the copying is reasonably necessary to achieving the new purpose.

Warhol provides a couple examples to help. Parody, for one, “needs to mimic an original to make its point.” A book review may also have a compelling reason to borrow from the original because it “targets the material for comment or criticism.”

Again, Warhol did not create this idea of justification; it has long been present in fair use decisions. For example, in rejecting a fair use defense for a defendant who had used photographs of a pop star’s secret wedding ceremony to illustrate a magazine article reporting on the ceremony, the Ninth Circuit remarked, “the controversy here has little to do with photos; instead, the photos here depict the couple’s clandestine wedding. The photos were not even necessary to prove that controverted fact—the marriage certificate, which is a matter of public record, may have sufficed to inform the public that the couple kept their marriage a secret for two years.”9Monge v. Maya Magazines, Inc., 688 F.3d 1164, 1175 (9th Cir. 2012).

Similarly, in rejecting fair use for the inclusion of plaintiff’s copyrighted comedy routine in defendant’s play, the Second Circuit said,

The “dramatic” purpose served by the Routine in the Play appears to be as a “McGuffin,” that is, as a theatrical device that sets up the plot, but is of little or no significance in itself. To advance the plot of the Play, specifically, to have the puppet Tyrone take on a persona distinct from that of Jason, defendants needed Jason to lie about something and for Tyrone to call him on it. But the particular subject of the lie—the Routine—appears irrelevant to that purpose.10TCA TV Corp. v. McCollum, 839 F.3d 168, 182 (2d Cir. 2016).

The court went on to note that “Such unaltered use of an allegedly copyrighted work, having no bearing on the original work, requires justification to qualify for a fair use defense” and concluded that nothing in the record showed such justification.

In short, justification asks if the original work is necessary to the secondary use, or if it is fungible—that is, are there substitutes or alternatives that can be used to achieve the same purpose. When an original work is necessary to a secondary use (one that has a distinct purpose), then there is a risk that copyright protections may stifle such uses absent fair use. But where it is not necessary, because there are substitutes or alternatives available, then the risk of copyright blocking a new work disappears. The secondary creator could instead “work[] up something fresh,”11510 U.S. at 580. find a work with favorable license terms, or turn to the public domain. As I’ve said previously, “Copyright’s purpose is to create a commercial market for creative works, and these outcomes are consistent with a functioning marketplace. When fair use privileges uses of original works that are not necessary to the creation of new works, it undermines this market, and, consequently, undermines copyright.”

References

References
1 Although the more recent Google v. Oracle decision addresses transformative use within its broader discussion of fair use, the Court’s treatment was superficial—little more than a rote recitation of the standard articulated in Campbell along with its application to the specific facts of the case.
2 Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569, 580-581 (1994).
3 Authors Guild v. Google, Inc., 804 F.3d 202, 215 (2d Cir. 2015).
4 See, e.g., Jane Ginsburg, Fair Use in the United States: Transformed, Deformed, Reformed? 2020 Sing. J. Legal Stud. 265 (2020); Patricia Cohen, Photographers Band Together to Protect Work in ‘Fair Use’ Cases, New York Times, Feb. 21, 2014; Hearing on Fair Use, Statement of June Besek, House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet (Jan. 28, 2014).
5 Jiarui Liu, An Empirical Study of Transformative Use in Copyright Law, 22 Stan. Tech. L. Rev. 163 (2019).
6 Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186, 212 n.18 (2003) (cleaned up).
7 Alan Latman, Fair Use of Copyrighted Works, pg. 7, Copyright Law Revision Study No. 14, US Copyright Office (1958).
8 Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, 510 US 569, 575 (1994).
9 Monge v. Maya Magazines, Inc., 688 F.3d 1164, 1175 (9th Cir. 2012).
10 TCA TV Corp. v. McCollum, 839 F.3d 168, 182 (2d Cir. 2016).
11 510 U.S. at 580.
By , June 16, 2023.

Ninth Circuit Holds that Registration of a Single Photography Database Supports Award of Statutory Damages for Each Individual Photo in the Database — “Because ‘photographers can create hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of photographs per day,’ the Ninth Circuit reasoned that allowing them simply to register a single database will protect the financial interests of the photographers and keep the Copyright Office from facing a deluge of copyright applications from prolific photographers. Thus, going forward, content owners can protect countless photographic works through a single registration and still enforce their rights with the threat of statutory damages.”

Google licenses content from news publishers under the EU Copyright Directive — In a blog post discussing the remarkable success of the EU Copyright Directive’s press publisher right, Google reports, “As of today, we have agreements in place covering over 1,500 publications across 15 countries.” A US bill aimed at addressing the same issue by allowing news publishers to collectively negotiate with online platforms advanced out of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee yesterday.

Twitter sued for $250 million by music publishers over ‘massive’ copyright infringement — “The National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) is suing Twitter on behalf of 17 music publishers representing the biggest artists in the business. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Tennessee, claims the company ‘fuels its business with countless infringing copies of musical compositions, violating Publishers’ and others’ exclusive rights under copyright law.'”

GitHub accused of varying Copilot output to avoid copyright allegations — “This assertion appeared on Thursday in the amended complaint against Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI over Copilot’s documented penchant for reproducing developers’ publicly posted, open source licensed code. The lawsuit, initially filed last November on behalf of four unidentified (“J. Doe”) plaintiffs, claims that Copilot – a code suggestion tool built from OpenAI’s Codex model and commercialized by Microsoft’s GitHub – was trained on publicly posted code in a way that violates copyright law and software licensing requirements and that it presents other people’s code as its own.”

A Judge Ruled Against an Artist Who Claimed Maurizio Cattelan Copied His Duct-Taped Banana, Deciding the Two Works Are Apples and Oranges — ” In his decision, Judge Scola outlined various features that distinguished the two works. Most notably, Banana and Orange has a green background and a border of masking tape and the banana was placed at only a slight angle from horizontal. By contrast, Cattelan’s Comedian has no specified background, no border and a much stronger angle.”

By , June 09, 2023.

The Supreme Court Case of Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith: What, if Anything, Does it Mean to Artificial Intelligence? — “The most obvious impact will be on the image cases brought by artists and Getty images, respectively, against Stability AI. These are cases where the AI developers allegedly (1) used works of artists and photographers without consent and (2) enable the creation of works that compete directly with the infringed works. Leaving aside procedural issues and focusing on the copyright merits, attorneys in these cases are likely making happy noises.”

Dua Lipa’s Copyright Accusers Drop ‘Levitating’ Infringement Lawsuit — “A Florida reggae band has decided to drop a copyright case accusing Dua Lipa of copying her smash hit song ‘Levitating’ from their earlier track, two days after a federal judge cast serious doubt on the lawsuit’s allegations.”

Adobe is so confident its Firefly generative AI won’t breach copyright that it’ll cover your legal bills — “Adobe Firefly, the software giant’s AI-powered image generation and expansion tool, is being rolled out to businesses today. At its flagship Adobe Summit event, the company is unveiling an expansion of Firefly for enterprise users that will include ‘full indemnification for the content created through these features,’ says Claude Alexandre, VP of digital media at Adobe.”

Museum Wins Lawsuit Over Photo of Michelangelo’s David — “An Italian museum has won a lawsuit against a magazine publisher which used a photo of Michelangelo’s sculpture David without permission — despite the 500-year-old artwork belonging in the public domain. In August 2020, GQ Italia superimposed a photograph of 16th-century statue David’s face onto an image of model Pietro Boselli for its cover.”

Opinion: Making Google and Meta pay for news they profit from — “The California Assembly recently voted in favor of journalism by supporting the proposed California Journalism Preservation Act (Assembly Bill 886), which would require social media companies to pay a ‘usage fee’ to publishers for the news content that the platforms benefit from. The publishers, in turn, would have to spend at least 70% of the fees they receive on journalists or support staff. The money would come out of the platforms’ advertising revenue and the amount would be determined by arbitration.”

By , June 02, 2023.

It’s Not Flattery…It’s Theft – How Copyright Laws Impact Fashion in the Horse World“‘Copying is the sincerest form of flattery‘” – or so we’re told. However, many designers in the horse world are small business owners where the designer and manufacturer are one-in-the-same. These individuals rely on selling garments out of their homes directly to consumers, or to other small businesses, in order to make a living.”

[Guest Post] Third time’s a charm: The Little Mermaid and a Big Win for Satire and Freedom of Speech — “In a ruling that shakes up the boundaries of copyright and parody in Denmark, the Danish Supreme Court has underlined the significance of freedom of speech and manifested the existence of a Danish copyright parody principle – including when the subject of debate involves a national symbol.”

Copyright Royalty Board Confirms Streaming Royalty Rate for Songwriters for 2018-2022 — Four years ago, the CRB increased the headline rate paid to songwriters for on-demand streaming services by a historically large amount. Appeals followed. This week, the Board confirmed that increase.

Copyright Office Announces Online Webinar on Application Process for Registration of Works with Artificial Intelligence-Generated Content — If you’re interested in learning more about how the US Copyright Office will apply its recently published guidance on registering works with AI generated content, or have questions about the process, register for this webinar June 28.

ISP’s Dynamic Injunction Fears Fail to Prevent Lookmovie & Flixtor Blocking — Torrentfreak’s Andy Maxwell reports on a decision from a district court in Rotterdam ordering dynamic blocking of domains belonging to two infringing services. The court concluded that the order was not ineffective or overbroad.

By , May 26, 2023.

Former Copyright Office GC Tells House IP Subcommittee His Counterpart Got It Wrong on AI Fair Use — “Baumgarten said that he ‘could not disagree more’ with Damle’s characterization of the process and that his ‘blanket assertion that input for generative AI “is fair use” may well be simply wrong.’ Baumgarten compared Damle’s statements with the perspective of some stakeholders during the 1960s, when the photocopier gained popularity for use in businesses and education. While many dismissed the concerns of authors and scientific textbook publishers as ‘clearly fair use’, case law later proved them wrong, Baumgarten wrote.”

Biden administration backs Google in song lyrics case at Supreme Court — The case is ML Genius Holdings v. Google, and the issue involves copyright preemption of breach of contract claims. But the idiosyncratic facts at issue here may make this a poor vehicle for Supreme Court review.

European Commission Calls for Pirate Site Blocking Around the Globe — “The European Commission has published its biannual list of foreign countries with problematic copyright policies. One of the highlighted issues is a lack of pirate site blocking, which is seen as an effective enforcement measure. Interestingly, the EU doesn’t mention the United States, which is arguably the most significant country yet to implement an effective site-blocking regime.”

AI tools like ChatGPT are built on mass copyright infringement — “It takes enormous amounts of data to train a generative AI program like ChatGPT, and in order to build these tools cheaply and quickly, developers are committing mass copyright infringement. These datasets are largely created by combing and scraping the internet for every type of content, from articles, books and artwork to our photos and tweets. These methods give rise to some big questions: Is the use of our copyright-protected content for training generative AI models legal”

10 Takeaways from the SCOTUS Decision in AWF v. Goldsmith (Part I) — “There is no doubt that the AWF v. Goldsmith decision will have a monumental impact on how courts interpret fair use in the future. However, it is important to understand that the decision does not actually change copyright law or our understanding of the fair use doctrine. What the decision does is level-set fair use jurisprudence to where the Supreme Court always intended it to be after its landmark fair use case, Campbell v Acuff-Rose Music.”

By , May 19, 2023.

Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts v. Goldsmith, No. 21-869 (May 18, 2023) [PDF] — “If the last century of American art, literature, music, and film is any indication, the existing copyright law, of which today’s opinion is a continuation, is a powerful engine of creativity.”

Fair use defense by Richard Prince fails to sway judge on Instagram prints — “Finding that artist Richard Prince ‘indeed tested the boundary between appropriation art and copyright infringement,’ a federal judge refused to throw out a pair of long-running copyright suits against Prince for his Instagram-based series ‘New Portraits.'”

U.S. Congress Doesn’t Plan to Overreact to Generative AI Copyright Challenges — “Generative AI is a revolutionary technology that’s expected to change society as we know it but, in parallel, copyright concerns persist. During a House Judiciary IP Subcommittee Hearing yesterday it was made clear that Congress doesn’t plan to overreact. Lawmakers hope to find the middle ground, but that could be easier said than done.”

Why Harry Potter is the copyright timebomb under generative AI models — “The EU legislation would potentially put all LLM companies in the line of fire, because many of their models are trained on copyrighted writing. And the proposed law would impact companies globally, as anyone offering products and services in any EU country would have to comply. Cribbing off Harry Potter might be GenAI’s next copyright timebomb.”

By , May 12, 2023.

He wrote a book on a rare subject. Then a ChatGPT replica appeared on Amazon. — As this WaPo article suggests, AI may not just devalue content, it may also devalue search, social media, platforms—indeed, the entire web. “The problem, Levin said, is that the wide availability of tools like ChatGPT means more people are producing similarly cheap content, and they’re all competing for the same slots in Google search results or Amazon’s on-site product reviews. So they all have to crank out more and more article pages, each tuned to rank highly for specific search queries, in hopes that a fraction will break through. The result is a deluge of AI-written websites, many of which are never seen by human eyes.”

Let’s Stop Analogizing Human Creators to Machines — “We should be wary of analogizing machine functions to human activity for the simple reason that copyright law (indeed all law) has never been anything but anthropocentric. Although it is difficult to avoid speaking in terms of machines ‘learning’ or ‘creating,’ it is essential that we either constantly remind ourselves that these are weak, inaccurate metaphors, or that a new glossary is needed to describe what certain AIs may be doing in the world of creative production.”

GitHub, Microsoft, OpenAI fail to wriggle out of Copilot copyright lawsuit — One of the current crop of U.S. lawsuits around generative AI closely watched by copyright pundits, which, despite that, and the headline here, does not actually contain a claim for copyright infringement. Rather, it includes adjacent claims for removal of copyright management information among more generalized state and common law claims. Most of which were dismissed with leave to amend by the court this week as reported here.

Generative AI, Copyright and the AI Act — A look at copyright and generative AI issues through the lens of EU law and the proposed AI Act.

Potential Impact on Major Pirate Sites as Vietnam ISPs Face New Responsibilities — Torrentfreak’s Andy Maxwell reports, ” After spending more than 16 years implementing intellectual property laws introduced in 2005, amendments to intellectual property law in Vietnam came into effect on January 1, 2023. At that point, however, implementation was still to be determined so, over the past few months, the government has been drafting decrees. Issued by the government in late April, Decree No. 17/2023/ND-CP offers guidance on various copyright matters related to ISP liability and enforcement measures, including disclosure of customer information. At first blush, it appears to herald a new world of opportunities for rightsholders.”

By , May 05, 2023.

Sheeran Wins Copyright Trial On Independent Creation — Copyright attorney Aaron Moss on the big copyright news of the week. Not a whole lot to analyze though, given that the outcome is a jury verdict. We’ll see if there are any post-judgment motions or an appeal.

The Latest on the EU’s Proposed Artificial Intelligence Act — Last week, the European Parliament agreed to an amended version of a comprehensive framework for regulating AI in the EU. Among other things, the proposal would create transparency obligations “when the AI system is trained with data protected under copyright laws.”

Spinrilla agrees to pay the majors $50 million to end copyright case — The judgment comes after a 2020 ruling finding Spinrilla directly liable for infringing the copyright of over 4,000 sound recordings and not eligible for the DMCA safe harbor.

U.S. Hits Z-Library With New Domain Name Seizures — Torrentfreak’s Ernesto Van der Sar reports, “The U.S. Government’s crackdown against Z-Library continues. After a few months of relative silence from law enforcement agencies, a new round of domain name seizures has begun. These efforts have taken out the shadow library’s main login panel but the site is not planning to throw in the towel.”

Literary Copyright Cases Writers and Publishers Should Know — The Copyright Alliance provides a useful survey of cases touching upon important doctrines for literary works.

By , April 28, 2023.

Empowering Women in IP: Reflections on #WorldIPDay — MPA GC and former US Register of Copyrights Karyn Temple observes both the progress women have made and the obstacles they face within the intellectual property system.

For You and Me or Private Property?: Evaluating the Copyright Claim in Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” — “As of this writing, the most recent litigation occurred in 2016 when the law firm of Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz filed a complaint on behalf of the band Satorii against The Richmond Organization (TRO), current publishers of ‘This Land’ and other Guthrie works. In 2015, the same firm successfully litigated a high profile case against Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. that established ‘Happy Birthday’ in the public domain. Buoyed by this success, the firm hoped to similarly invalidate the copyright claim in both ‘This Land’ and the civil rights anthem ‘We Shall Overcome.’ While the cases involving ‘Happy Birthday’ and ‘We Shall Overcome’ were relatively clear-cut, the facts of the copyright claim in ‘This Land’ are more complicated and warrant an in-depth look.”

World Book & Copyright Day: the origin — “The celebration goes back to ‘La Diada de Sant Jordi’, or the Festival of St George, which is Catalunya’s version of Valentine’s Day, when people give each other red roses—but also books. This one-day festival, held every year on the 23rd of April, is inspired by the legend of Saint George, who has been the patron Saint of Catalunya since 1456.”

An AI Scraping Tool Is Overwhelming Websites With Traffic — “The people at the head of the new crop of AI companies believe that their technology could replace 80 percent of  jobs in the U.S. and pose ‘massive risks’ to society. We should be skeptical of these claims, but it’s also worth noting that the people building tools they consider to be so disruptive are doing so without ever asking the internet users whose efforts are powering AI if they wish to fuel that technology.”

AI Imagery May Destroy History As We Know It — “Eventually, these programs will be training on new imagery as it is made available in real time. At that moment, A.I. will reference previously created A.I. images and incorporate them into its new output. This cannibalistic-type training will result in the further dilution of the truth. At some point in the future, it is conceivable that there could be more fake images on the internet than real photographs.”

By , April 21, 2023.

Inside the secret list of websites that make AI like ChatGPT sound smart — The Washington Post’s Kevin Schaul, Szu Yu Chen and Nitasha Tiku take a close and visual look at the sources of works used to train many high profile English-language large language models. Worth noting: “Also high on the list: b-ok.org No. 190, a notorious market for pirated e-books that has since been seized by the U.S. Justice Department. At least 27 other sites identified by the U.S. government as markets for piracy and counterfeits were present in the data set.” The article also includes a search function to see what individual websites were included in the dataset, so I had to check…

Search prompt for the websites in Google's C4 dataset with copyhype.com as input. Search results show 1 domain begins with "copyhype.com", with a rank of 48,596, 360k tokens, and 0.0002% of all tokens. Originally from https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2023/ai-chatbot-learning/?tid=ss_tw.

What the Online Piracy Data Tells Us About Copyright Policymaking — Researcher Michael D. Smith summarizes the peer-reviewed empirical literature on piracy in this article, which he says supports three broad conclusions: “digital piracy harms creators by reducing their ability to make money from their creative efforts”, “digital piracy harms society by reducing the economic incentives for investment in creative output,” and “legislative interventions implemented worldwide have been effective in reversing these harms.”

Update: 4 Copyright Claims Board Cases to Watch — PlagiarismToday’s Jonathan Bailey reviews four of the over 400 claims that have been filed at the newly created US copyright small claims tribunal, which is still under a year old. These cases present interesting or notable facts and parties.

At London Book Fair Tuesday: Copyright Under Attack — “Too many times, the best-intended publishing stalwarts—you may know some, yourself—have consoled themselves and others that no one in nearby industries (education, entertainment, communications) could possibly be willing to do anything that might undermine the essential value of copyright protection. What’s more, it’s easy to think that one market’s struggles with a rewritten piece of legislation or a foray into popular misconceptions about copyright will stay in that market.”

The US Supreme Court’s Warhol case; what is the fuss about? — Bill Patry on the anticipated decision: “In an era when partisan hyperbole passes for ordinary discussion, one must get used to headlines like ‘The Supreme Court may force us to rethink 500 years of art’. Given that the first American copyright law is from 1790 and did not even begin to take shape with respect to fair use until a judicial opinion in 1841, this seems a few centuries off even in hyperbole.”