Copyright & Social Media
Communications Law
OpenAI defeats news outlets’ copyright lawsuit over AI training, for now
I came across this interesting article that neatly ties into what the class has covered on Copyright in the last few classes. I find the New York district court has ruled in an unfortunate way, as it seems that AI-learning algorithms can seemingly circumvent traditional copyright protections. It seems that at least in the state […]
Podcast: Interview with Canadian Entertainment Lawyer and drummer of “One Bad Son”: Kurt Dahl the “Lawyer-Drummer”
Kurt Dahl the “Lawyer/Drummer”
US Copyright Office Rejects DMCA Exemption for Remote Access to Libraries’ Video Game Collections
Hi everyone! I would like to share with you an interesting article I came across on findlaw.com that discusses a recent decision by the U.S. Copyright Office following a petition for an exemption under Section 1201 of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to make video game collections remotely accessible for scientific research. The Digital Millennium […]
Judge Dismisses Copyright Infringement Lawsuit Against OpenAI
On Thursday, November 7, a New York district court dismissed a copyright lawsuit against OpenAI that accused the company of misusing copyrighted material to train ChatGPT. News outlets Raw Story and AlterNet filed the copyright infringement lawsuit in February. The district judge ruled that the news outlets had not shown sufficient harm caused by ChatGPT […]
CanLII v. Caseway: Future of AI-generated Legal Databases on Trial
Resonating with our latest class discussion, in a fresh claim filed at the BC Supreme Court, the beloved CanLII gets in a legal dispute with Caseway, a company using AI as a legal researcher assistant to provide clients with legal information for a subscription fee. CanLII alleges that the company “coordinated the bulk and systematic […]
Copyright and AI
Since our class is focused on Canadian IP law, I’m working to incorporate some relevant discussions from Swiss legal literature that I’ve come across. This paper examines copyright issues related to generative AI, with a focus on text and image generation programs. The first part briefly outlines the basics of such AI programs. The discussion […]
“Text Mining” as Fair Dealing?
At the end of the last class, we realized that one of the pressing questions related to AI that courts around the world will soon have to answer is whether the equivalent of the Canadian “fair dealing” is met when generative AI uses copyrighted works to “learn”. That same day, I came across an interview […]
China finds in favour of copyright in AI
As we’re wrapping up the course section on copyright and considering we have focused a lot on AI, I thought it would be interesting to share a case from 2023 in China where it was held that there can be copyright in works of AI. The case involved an AI generated image which was created […]
Could Canadian IP Law Benefit from Anti-SLAPP Legislation?
This term I am taking another IP course with Professor Reynolds about the intersection between IP and human rights. I decided to write my final paper on how enacting Anti-SLAPP legislation at the federal level could bolster users’ rights (framed as free expression rights as well as IP rights) and the doctrine of fair dealing […]
Copyright Exemption to fix McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines
I came across an interesting story regarding a copyright issue and McDonald’s ice cream machines: https://ktla.com/news/consumer-business/mcdonalds-restaurants-find-solution-for-infamous-broken-ice-cream-machine-issues McDonald’s ice cream machines are notorious for frequently being out of service. These machines are exclusively supplied by Taylor Company, which previously held the sole copyright and the exclusive right to repair them. This restricted McDonald’s franchisees and other […]