Friday’s Endnotes – 07/12/24

‘Landmark Victory’: Copyright Office Finalizes Rule Change On Streaming Royalties — Billboard’s Bill Donahue reports on a US Copyright Office rule finalized this week which addresses the payment of streaming royalties to songwriters who have invoked their termination rights. The rule, which was celebrated by a number of songwriter groups, overturns the previous policy of the Mechanical Licensing Collective.

Z-Library Admins “Escape House Arrest” After Judge Approves U.S. Extradition — “Two alleged Z-Library operators who were arrested in Argentina at the request of the United States, have reportedly escaped from house arrest. Russian citizens Anton Napolsky and Valeriia Ermakova were facing extradition to the United States after a judge approved their transfer. After filing an appeal at the Supreme Court of Justice requesting political refugee status, the pair apparently vanished into thin air.”

Ginsburg on Fair Use — Recommended article from Professor Jane Ginsburg, which examines how the Supreme Court’s two latest fair use decisions, Google v. Oracle and Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith, have redrawn the landscape of US fair use case law, and how they may impact the question of whether the reproduction of copyrighted works to train AI models is covered by fair use.

Anna’s Archive Faces Millions in Damages and a Permanent Injunction — “Popular pirate library search engine Anna’s Archive faces monetary damages and a permanent injunction at a U.S. court. The site’s operators failed to respond to a lawsuit filed by OCLC, after its WorldCat database was scraped and published online. Anna’s Archive remains silent but did switch to a new domain name recently, which may not be entirely coincidental.”