Friday’s Endnotes – 07/07/23

Two More Copyright Claims Board Cases Concluded — Jonathan Bailey has been closely watching the proceedings of the Copyright Claims Board, which recently entered its second year of operations. Here, Bailey reports on two more cases that have reached a resolution.

Amazon’s ebook charts are full of AI-generated spam — “This situation marks a real danger to the livelihoods of working authors. If the ebook market is flooded with spam, then it’s harder for readers to find real books. It’s already messing with Kindle’s genre categories, creating even more roadblocks for self-published writers to cultivate an audience.”

Generative AI in Games Will Create a Copyright Crisis — “Historically, claims of ownership to in-game creations or user-generated creations (IGCs or UGCs) have been rendered moot by ‘take it or leave it’ end-user license agreements—the dreaded EULAs that nobody reads. Generally, this means players surrender any ownership of their creations by switching on the game. (Minecraft is a rare exception here. Its EULA has long afforded players ownership of their IGCs, with relatively few community freakouts.) AI adds new complexities. Laws in both the US and the UK stipulate that, when it comes to copyright, only humans can claim authorship. So for a game like AI Dungeon, where the platform allows a player to, essentially, ‘write’ a narrative with the help of a chatbot, claims of ownership can get murky: Who owns the output? The company that developed the AI, or the user?”

Ninth Circuit agrees fight over Nirvana’s use of ‘Upper Hell’ belongs in UK — “According to Bundy’s 2021 lawsuit, the late Scott-Giles drew the illustration for the English translation of the first volume of the Dante’s trilogy, ‘Inferno,’ by his close friend Dorothy Sayers. The U.K. citizen sued after she discovered that Nirvana LLC, a company that handles the licensing and sale of Nirvana-branded merchandise, and Live Nation Merchandise were selling T-shirts, hoodies, key fobs, and mugs with the image.”

Jeff Koons, sculptor each claim advantage after Warhol copyright decision — “Koons told the court on Friday that his use of the bench as ‘raw material’ for ‘creative and communicative objectives entirely distinct from plaintiff’s utilitarian purpose of creating a platform for sexually explicit performances’ favored a fair-use finding. Hayden said the decision ‘shatters’ Koons’ defense because the purpose of his use of the sculpture was ‘exactly the same as Hayden’s original purpose: to serve as a creative set piece on which Ilona Staller would engage in sexually explicit poses and performances.'”