Two items in this week’s copyright news show how the remedies in copyright law are wildly out of whack: Anthropic’s unprecedented settlement payment, and Rick Beato’s impossible uphill fight against Universal Music Group. We’ve commented at length on the Anthropic settlement in a statement and blog post, but it bears re-re-repeating that the most important factor in this saga is the statutory damages regime…

The U.S. Copyright Office announced on Tuesday, September 2, that Robert Kasunic, Associate Register and Director of Registration Policy and Practice, has left the Office after 25 years of service. On behalf of the Re:Create Coalition, we congratulate Kasunic on his retirement from federal service and thank him for the vital work he’s done for the copyright community throughout his…

Earlier this month, Anthropic reached a settlement agreement with a group of authors who had sued the company for using their works to train its AI models. The copyright cartel celebrated the deal, and some suggested it was proof that AI training requires a license. That framing obscures a key fact: Anthropic had already won on the question of whether…

In June 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment. This landmark case will determine under what circumstances internet providers can be held liable for subscriber piracy. A jury had initially ruled against Cox, handing down a $1 billion verdict in favor of Sony and other record labels. However, an appeals court later…

The copyright community is closely watching the landmark Supreme Court case Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment, which will determine whether internet service providers (ISPs) can be held liable for subscribers’ alleged infringement. Today, Cox filed its merits brief, marking the latest development in the case. In its brief, Cox Communications argues that if the lower court’s ruling is…

Judge John Kness, a federal judge in the Northern District of Illinois, recently issued the opinion that many scholars and other observers have been waiting for, demolishing an IP litigation technique that Professor Eric Goldman has dubbed the “SAD Scheme.” A plaintiff runs a SAD scheme by filing an IP complaint (mostly trademark claims, but copyright and patent have been…

Taylor Swift can add “copyright educator” to her laundry list of achievements, as her struggle to control her work has done perhaps more than any artist’s (and she is far from the first) to raise awareness of copyright. The saga seems to have reached a happy conclusion earlier this summer as Swift was finally able to acquire the master rights…

Library of Congress: The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world and serves as the research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office. Home to over 170 million works, it provides an unparalleled record of human creativity and plays an important role in fostering long term preservation of the cultural record…

One of the most frequently invoked and most compelling policy arguments for permitting unlicensed AI training is that obtaining specific permission to train on billions or trillions of copyrighted works is impossible and throttling AI development with impossible demands would have starkly negative economic and national security consequences. As one prominent commentator recently put it, “[Y]ou just can’t do that…