Friday’s Endnotes – 09/23/22

French Publishers Win Z-Library Piracy Blocking Order — Torrentfreak reports, “The National Publishing Union, an industry group representing more than 700 members in the publishing sector, says that legal action launched in the summer to prevent piracy has been successful. The expedited process at a Paris court targeted more than 200 domains related to Z-Library, all of which must now be blocked by French ISPs.”

ECtHR finds violation of right to property by State’s failure to enforce copyright — “First, the question whether copyright is exhausted by the physical publication of a book (distribution) with effect for its digital dissemination (communication to the public and reproduction) has now been settled in the EU. . . Second, the attempt of the national courts to rely on the apparent object and purpose of copyright exceptions without considering their substantive requirement demonstrates a commitment to legal certainty and foreseeability. It also demonstrates that the protection of copyright, and intellectual property in general, as determined by statutory rules cannot be shifted by creative (and possibly policy-driven) application of the law by courts.”

Getty Images bans AI-generated content over fears of legal challenges — “Getty Images CEO Craig Peters told The Verge that the ban was prompted by concerns about the legality of AI-generated content and a desire to protect the site’s customers. ‘There are real concerns with respect to the copyright of outputs from these models. . . There are real concerns with respect to the copyright of outputs from these models and unaddressed rights issues with respect to the imagery, the image metadata and those individuals contained within the imagery,’ said Peters. Given these concerns, he said, selling AI artwork or illustrations could potentially put Getty Images users at legal risk.”

Amazon Is Changing Its Ebook Return Policy in Major Breakthrough for Authors — The Authors Guild reports, “This process will create a strong deterrent against buying, reading, and returning ebooks within seven days, and readers who attempt to abuse the return policy will be penalized under Amazon’s policies. The Authors Guild and the Society of Authors, its counterpart organization in the U.K., had taken up this issue with Amazon’s senior executives earlier this year.”

Balganesh on Learned Hand & Copyright — Via the Legal Theory Blog, “Learned Hand is often described as the greatest copyright judge to have ever sat on the bench. By the 1950s, the most important parts of U.S. copyright law had been his creation, all from his time as a judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Despite all of this, there has been little systematic analysis of Hand’s approach to copyright and of the reasons why his jurisprudence in multiple areas of copyright law have survived the test of time.”