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…

Following the release of the White House’s “America’s AI Action Plan,” organizations across various industry sectors commented on the plan’s impact on their efforts. Although the plan did not directly address copyright and AI, the President stated in his speech at last week’s AI Summit that additional copyright regulations could hinder America’s innovation agenda, and that the current copyright system…

In March, Americans of all backgrounds submitted their thoughts and ideas to the White House’s AI Action plan, including recommendations from large tech companies, libraries, Hollywood actors, news organizations, and many others. Yesterday the Administration released “America’s AI Action Plan” and acknowledged what Re:Create and our members have long said: America’s copyright system is equipped to handle emerging technology without…

As a child of the 1990s, everywhere I look I am confronted with reboots of the culture of my youth. Some of them are fun: my kids are wearing ridiculously baggy pants, flannel shirts, and Doc Martens just like I used to; the bands I like are reuniting for tours and documentaries. Some of these reboots are not so fun,…

When I was a kid, I liked to draw Marvel and Disney characters. It was how I first got interested in drawing and how I participated in those fictional worlds—a 10-year-old’s 1980s version of fan fiction. I made dozens of Wolverines and Donald Ducks, and neither Walt Disney nor Stan Lee ever sent lawyers around to knock the pencil out…

For months those of us who follow fair use closely and understand how the doctrine is applied in courts have had to swallow hard and count to 10 while partisans in the AI wars declared, based on no evidence, that all AI training is obviously infringing. These declarations were so obnoxious to the fair use community because we knew, based…