Take a Big Step Back: A Brief History of Fair Use & Why Everyone’s Talking About Fair Use and AI  Fair use is the legal right to use copyrighted material without permission from the copyright holder when the use serves the goals of copyright itself by enabling new creativity, new insight, and new knowledge. Fair use embraces uses that are…

In a week chock-a-block with copyright news, a popular pastime in Washington, D.C., has been trying to figure out whether the Copyright Office’s (pre-publication) report on fair use and AI training, which was released late Friday night, had been a factor in the Trump administration’s unceremonious (attempted) firing of the Register of Copyrights, Shira Perlmutter, later that weekend. I won’t…

By Brandon Butler Re:Create Executive Director The Copyright Office’s third report on copyright and artificial intelligence has been hotly anticipated, and the political storm unfolding around the President’s attempted dismissal of the Librarian of Congress and the Register of Copyrights has only heightened the drama. The draft version of the report published last week does not live up to this…

As Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence heads to the appellate court, we wanted to re-up Re:Create Executive Director Brandon Butler’s op-ed on the mistakes in the lower court’s opinion. Following U.S. Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas’ February 2025 ruling in the first major AI fair use case, Butler authored an op-ed in Law360 criticizing the opinion, highlighting its potential impact on…

Jack Dorsey recently made a stir on the website he founded, formerly known as Twitter, with a terse statement: “Delete all IP law.” He didn’t elaborate, but others piled on, including Elon Musk and Senator Josh Hawley. The various copyright threats against artificial intelligence tools (32 lawsuits and counting) presumably are the impetus for Dorsey’s frustration. Eccentric tech billionaires aren’t…

This month marks the 10th anniversary of the founding of Re:Create, a diverse coalition of 19 member organizations, including libraries, civil society groups, technology companies, online rights advocates and startups, launched to promote a balanced copyright framework that supports fair use, innovation, creativity, and consumer rights. Since its inception, Re:Create has championed balanced copyright policies that protect a free and…

Content Filtering: Content filtering is the use of digital technology to act automatically on content that is shared, stored, or published by a digital platform or service provider. Nothing in the copyright law requires content filtering, and safe harbors in Section 512 of the DMCA ensure that internet service providers, including platforms for user generated content, are not held liable…