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.”