Copyright Lately

26/07/2025

While Donald Trump was making headlines last week with a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal, a federal court quietly handed him another legal defeat. Southern District of New York Judge Paul Gardephe dismissed Trump’s copyright claims to The Trump Tapes—Bob Woodward’s audio compilation of twenty interviews conducted with the president between 2016 and 2020—in a comprehensive 81-page ruling that decisively rejected every theory of ownership Trump advanced.

If you’re keeping score at home, this is Trump’s third copyright lawsuit, though his first as a plaintiff. Last year, singer Eddy Grant successfully sued Trump over the use of “Electric Avenue” in a 2020 campaign video. (Another case brought by the estate of Isaac Hayes over Trump’s use of the 1966 Sam & Dave classic “Hold On, I’m Coming” during the 2024 campaign is still pending.) But here, Trump claimed ownership of his own recorded words—and lost handily. Judge Gardephe’s sweeping opinion addressed virtually every theory of interview copyright that courts have considered over recent decades.

Full story up now on copyrightlately.com or link in bio.

21/07/2025

Donald Trump just lost another copyright lawsuit—this time claiming ownership over his own recorded words in Bob Woodward's interviews.

The 81-page ruling reads like a judicial eye-roll: Trump claimed joint authorship, then individual authorship, then breach of contract. The court rejected every argument.

It's a clear win for journalists who've long faced uncertainty over who owns interview recordings.

I break down the decision, how Trump's own pleadings doomed his case, and why some interview copyright claims end up being less about IP rights and more about suppressing unwanted speech.

Full story up now on Copyright Lately:

https://copyrightlately.com/trump-loses-copyright-fight-over-woodward-interview-recordings/

Donald Trump just took another copyright loss, as court holds that interviewers, not their subjects, own rights in recorded conversations.

04/07/2025

Can AI companies train their models on millions of copyrighted books without permission? This week, two federal judges in the same California courthouse both said yes—but their versions of “yes” are about as similar as writing a book “the old-fashioned way” and projectile vomiting an endless torrent of AI-generated romance novels onto the Amazon Kindle home page.

In Bartz v. Anthropic, Judge William Alsup views AI as a digital apprentice. To him, these systems learn the way human writers always have: by reading widely, absorbing influences, and then creating something new. In Kadrey v. Meta, Judge Vince Chhabria sees something far more ominous: a content factory capable of burying human creativity under an avalanche of machine-written pulp fiction.

Both judges found that training large language models on copyrighted books qualified as transformative fair use. Yet where Alsup celebrates AI for democratizing authorship—helping “less capable writers” punch above their weight—Chhabria warns that the next Agatha Christie might never bother picking up a pen. (To be fair, the current Agatha Christie hasn’t picked one up since 1976.)

These aren’t just different analyses of fair use doctrine. They reflect fundamentally different philosophies about the nature of AI and the purpose of copyright itself. Should the law protect creative output, wherever it comes from? Or should it protect the human beings who create it?

Full story, up now on copyrightlately.com or link in bio.

04/07/2025

Earlier this month, entertainment attorney Corey Field—a fixture in the copyright community who also happens to be an accomplished composer—received a certificate of registration for his String Quartet. It looked official enough: title, registration number, effective date, and the seal of the U.S. Copyright Office.

But when he sent me a copy, something was noticeably missing.

In the top-left corner—where the Register of Copyrights ordinarily signs off—there was nothing. No name. No signature. Just an empty space where authority should be.

It wasn’t a clerical error. It was the latest consequence of the Trump administration’s abrupt removal of Register Shira Perlmutter—a constitutional standoff that’s left the Copyright Office issuing certificates without anyone clearly authorized to sign them.

Full story, up now on copyrightlately.com or link in bio.

30/06/2025

Should copyright protect creative output—or the humans who create it? Two judges just revealed the philosophical fault line that will define AI's legal future. Full story, up now on Copyright Lately:

https://copyrightlately.com/apprentice-or-adversary-judges-split-on-ai-and-copyright/

Two wins for AI companies mask a deeper divide: Is artificial intelligence a creative tool or an existential threat?

23/06/2025

YouTuber Ethan Klein—alongside his wife and creative partner Hila—once defended reaction videos as fair use in court. Now he’s back in court, this time as a copyright plaintiff, arguing that b**g rips, blank stares, and off-camera bathroom breaks don’t quite meet the same standard.

On June 19, Klein’s company, Ted Entertainment, Inc., filed copyright infringement lawsuits against three Twitch streamers—Denims, Frogan, and Kaceytron—for airing his Content Nuke: Hasan Piker video nearly in full while allegedly adding little more than their presence.

The complaints take express aim at what Klein calls “lazy reaction videos”—streams that replay copyrighted content with minimal interruption and even less analysis. Think vacant looks, v**e clouds, and “the sounds of loud gastral [sic] intestinal emissions.” One streamer allegedly showed 70 minutes of Klein’s 100-minute video without speaking. Another asked her chat, “Can I use the bathroom please? I’ll leave it playing.” A third, according to the complaint, “smoked more than she spoke.”

Now, three federal courts will get to sort through the absurdity to decide where commentary ends and copying begins. Is sitting in silence “transformative”? What about scrolling your phone? At what point does a reaction video become just a watch party with a we**am?

Full story, up now on copyrightlately.com or link in bio.

23/06/2025

The reaction video helped YouTuber Ethan Klein win a landmark fair use case back in 2017.

Now he’s suing other streamers for going too far with the very format he helped legitimize.

Klein is targeting what he calls "lazy reaction videos": long stretches of copyrighted content played with little more than blank stares, b**g rips, and off-camera bathroom breaks.

It's a twist of fair use fate—and a reminder of the ongoing tension between commentary and copying.

I break down the legal claims, the community backlash, and the irony of one of fair use’s most prominent champions now testing its limits. Full story up now on Copyright Lately:

https://copyrightlately.com/ethan-klein-files-copyright-lawsuits-over-lazy-reaction-videos/

Ethan Klein helped establish fair use protections for reaction videos. Now he's suing to prove that not all reactions are created equal.

17/06/2025

Another week, another AI copyright complaint. But if you’re tempted to file Disney v. Midjourney away as just “Lawsuit No. 42,” don’t.

On Wednesday, Disney and Universal sued the popular image-generation platform for copyright infringement, marking the first time major film studios have entered the generative AI litigation fray. And while the 110-page complaint includes now-familiar allegations about unauthorized training, that’s not what sets this case apart.

It’s the outputs.

Unlike many of the 40-plus AI lawsuits currently pending, this one doesn’t get bogged down in the technicalities of training datasets or model weights. It’s less about what went into the system than what comes out. And what comes out looks an awful lot like Darth Vader, Bart Simpson, the Minions, Elsa, Iron Man, Shrek, and a host of other copyrighted characters.

Check out the full story, up now on copyrightlately.com or link in bio.

16/06/2025

The entertainment industry knows better than anyone that visuals can do what words often can't.

Disney and Universal’s new copyright infringement lawsuit against Midjourney takes that to heart. Instead of getting bogged down in the technicalities of training datasets or model weights, they simply show the court what happens when a user types “Yoda with lightsaber” into the platform.

The result? Yoda. With a lightsaber.

After 40+ AI copyright cases that have struggled to connect the dots between training data and specific infringing outputs, this one puts the outputs front and center.

I break down what makes the case different—and what it could mean for the future of AI content moderation—up now on Copyright Lately:

https://copyrightlately.com/why-the-studios-midjourney-lawsuit-is-different/

Hollywood knows the power of visuals. In their lawsuit against Midjourney, the studios aren't just alleging infringement—they're showing it.

29/05/2025

Can the White House remove the Register of Copyrights? Shira Perlmutter says no—and warns the stakes go far beyond her job. New post, up now on copyrightlately.com or link in bio.

27/05/2025

A constitutional showdown over who controls the Copyright Office heads to court tomorrow. Full story now on Copyright Lately.
https://copyrightlately.com/perlmutters-lawsuit-is-about-more-than-just-getting-her-job-back/

Can the White House remove the Register of Copyrights? Shira Perlmutter says no—and warns the stakes go far beyond her job.

12/05/2025

If you unplugged for the weekend, congratulations on making excellent life choices. Now you’ve got some catching up to do.

Late Friday afternoon—a time traditionally reserved for burying news and slipping out of the office—the U.S. Copyright Office quietly dropped a “pre-publication” version of Part 3 of its highly anticipated artificial intelligence study. The 108-page report provides the Office’s detailed take on how U.S. copyright law, particularly the fair use doctrine, should apply to the use of copyrighted works to train generative AI models.

To be clear, “pre-publication versions” of Copyright Office reports aren’t standard practice. I break down the timing, the fallout, and my five biggest takeaways from the Copyright Office’s new AI report—now up on copyrightlately.com or link in bio.