Sean Combs: The Reckoning review – you can see why the musician is fighting to ban this horrific documentary; The Guardian, December 2, 2025

 Stuart Heritage, The Guardian; Sean Combs: The Reckoning review – you can see why the musician is fighting to ban this horrific documentary

"If its subject gets his way, the new documentary series Sean Combs: The Reckoning might not be available on Netflix for long. On Monday, lawyers on behalf of Combs sent a cease and desist letter to the streamer, demanding that the series be withdrawn based on the inclusion of footage that they claim violates copyright, and involves discussions of “legal strategy that were not intended for public viewing”."

Copyright Piracy at the Supreme Court In Cox v. Sony: is an internet provider liable for digital thieves?; The Wall Street Journal, November 27, 2025

 The Editorial Board, The Wall Street Journal; Copyright Piracy at the Supreme Court" In Cox v. Sony, is an internet provider liable for digital thieves?

"If a college student pirates music files, can his broadband provider be liable for his copyright infringement? That’s the question before the Supreme Court on Monday in Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment, which tugs at the tension between protecting intellectual property and the internet."

Court to consider billion-dollar judgment for copyright infringement; SCOTUSblog, November 25, 2025

 Ronald Mann , SCOTUSblog; Court to consider billion-dollar judgment for copyright infringement

"The court will hear its big copyright case for the year during the first week of the December session, when on Monday, Dec. 1, it reviews a billion-dollar ruling against Cox Communications based on its failure to eradicate copyright infringement by its customers."

Huckabee’s Copyright Claim Over AI Advances Against Bloomberg; Bloomberg Law, November 25, 2025

 

Aruni Soni

, Bloomberg Law; Huckabee’s Copyright Claim Over AI Advances Against Bloomberg

 "A federal judge declined to dismiss a copyright-infringement claim in a proposed class action led by Mike Huckabee, accusing Bloomberg LP of using a pirated dataset to train its AI model.

Judge Margaret M. Garnett said she couldn’t evaluate Bloomberg’s defense that its use of authors’ books to train BloombergGPT was fair use under US copyright law without a factual record, denying its motion to dismiss in a Monday opinion filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York."

White Bird Clinic sues Willamette Valley Crisis Care over misuse of trade secrets, copyright infringement; Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB), November 24, 2025

 Nathan Wilk , Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB); White Bird Clinic sues Willamette Valley Crisis Care over misuse of trade secrets, copyright infringement

"Eugene’s White Bird Clinic is suing a rival nonprofit, Willamette Valley Crisis Care, over copyright infringement and the stealing of trade secrets.

WVCC was founded after White Bird shuttered CAHOOTS services in Eugene in April. The new nonprofit hopes to launch a similar mobile crisis intervention program and has multiple former CAHOOTS staff members on board.

White Bird is now alleging that minutes before WVCC co-founder Alese “Dandy” Colehour sent a resignation letter to White Bird earlier this month, they downloaded confidential client information, training manuals and other materials to give to the newer non-profit.

White Bird is also accusing the WVCC of infringing on its CAHOOTS trademark through advertising materials and other public outreach efforts, and of passing off White Bird’s services as its own."

Japanese Companies Tell OpenAI to Stop Infringing On Its IP; Gizmodo, November 2, 2025

 JUSTIN CARTER , Gizmodo; Japanese Companies Tell OpenAI to Stop Infringing On Its IP

"The Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA), which represents several major Japanese entertainment companies such as TV studio Toei and game developer Square Enix, recently sent a written request calling on OpenAI to end its unauthorized use of their IP to train its recently launched Sora 2 generative AI.

Nearly 20 co-signers have accused the tech company of copyright infringement, alleging a “large portion” of Sora 2 content “closely resembles Japanese content or images [as] a result of using Japanese content as machine learning data.” The letter mentioned OpenAI’s policy of using copyrighted works unless the owner explicitly asks to opt out, but argues under Japanese law, it should instead be an opt-in system, since permission for copyrighted works is generally required beforehand."

To protect his copyrights, storm chaser Reed Timmer goes to court often; The Oklahoman, October 19, 2025

 Dale Denwalt, The Oklahoman; To protect his copyrights, storm chaser Reed Timmer goes to court often

"A copyright controversy between celebrity storm chaser Reed Timmer and a YouTube streamer highlights a behind-the-scenes legal industry meant to protect original content online.

For fans, it has offered a peek inside the lucrative but complex world of federal copyright law and the legal tools used to make sure original creators get paid when their work is used by someone else. While the dispute was resolved quickly, Timmer often goes to court to protect his work.

A decade ago, it was mostly large, well-established companies and publishers who rooted out cases of copyright infringement, said Oklahoma City attorney Douglas Sorocco. But now there are more independent creators, citizen journalists and small businesses creating their own digital content...

"For the hurricane, I thought it would be A-OK to show very brief clips of what was happening with Milton so I could stay up to date," White said.

Timmer agreed, even if his digital rights management company didn't. In a response video posted the same day as White's, Timmer clarified he is "not suing Charlie" and asked that the copyright claim be removed."

Disney Sends Cease And Desist Letter To Character.ai For Copyright Infringement As Studios Move To Protect IP; Deadline, September 30, 2025

 Jill Goldsmith, Deadline; Disney Sends Cease And Desist Letter To Character.ai For Copyright Infringement As Studios Move To Protect IP

"Walt Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter to Character.AI, a “personalized superintelligence platform” that the media giant says is ripping off copyrighted characters without authorization.

The AI startup offers users the ability to create customizable, personalized AI companions that can be totally original but in some cases are inspired by existing characters, including, it seems, Disney icons from Spider-Man and Darth Vader to Moana and Elsa.

The letter is the latest legal salvo by Hollywood as studios begin to step up against AI. Disney has also sued AI company Midjourney for allegedly improper use and distribution of AI-generated characters from Disney films. Disney, Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures this month sued Chinese AI firm MiniMax for copyright infringement."

Sued for Playing With Toys?; The New York Times, August 5, 2025

 Chantel Tattoli, The New York Times ; Sued for Playing With Toys?

"When Paul Welander, a health care worker in Britain, heard about a lawsuit that the maker of Calico Critters toys recently filed against a social media content creator, he wasn’t totally surprised.

The critters, introduced in 1985, are tiny velvety-bodied animals — rabbits, mice, moles, bears, beavers, badgers, pigs, penguins — dressed in modest clothes and sold in sets as families.

The lawsuit alleges that the creator committed copyright and trademark infringement by making videos that portray the twee toys in scandalous situations: having affairs, driving drunk, taking drugs. Videos not unlike the crassly captioned pictures of the toys, also known as Sylvanians, that Mr. Welander, 51, started sharing on social media back in 2016."

Popular Rock Band Demands Trump's DHS Take Down ICE Video Over Copyright Violation: 'And Go F–k Yourselves': "It's obvious that you don't respect Copyright Law"; Latin Times, July 14, 2025

 Morgan Music, Latin Times; Popular Rock Band Demands Trump's DHS Take Down ICE Video Over Copyright Violation: 'And Go F–k Yourselves'

"It's obvious that you don't respect Copyright Law"

"The rock band Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (BRMC) is demanding that the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) remove a recent video that used their recording of "God's Gonna Cut You Down" without permission.

The band made their disapproval of the DHS very clear, accusing the agency of violating not only copyright law, but fundamental constitutional values.

"It's obvious that you don't respect Copyright Law and Artist Rights any more than you respect Habeas Corpus and Due Process rights," the band wrote. "Not to mention the separation of Church and State per the US Constitution."

"For the record, we hereby order @dhsgov to cease and desist the use of our recording and demand that you immediately pull down your video," the statement continued.

"Oh, and go f–k yourselves," they concluded."

Eminem Hits Meta With A Copyright Lawsuit After It Allegedly Misappropriated Hundreds Of His Songs; ABOVE THE LAW, June 4, 2025

  Chris Williams , ABOVE THE LAW; Eminem Hits Meta With A Copyright Lawsuit After It Allegedly Misappropriated Hundreds Of His Songs

"Don’t. Mess. With. Eminem. And if the events are as cut and dried as the complaint makes it seem, Meta is getting off easy with the $109M price tag. Meta of all companies should know that the only thing that can get away with brazenly stealing the work of wealthy hard-working artists without facing legal consequences is AI-scrapping software."

Meta Faces Copyright Reckoning in Authors’ Generative AI Case; Bloomberg Law, April 30, 2025

Isaiah Poritz, Annelise Levy, Bloomberg Law; Meta Faces Copyright Reckoning in Authors’ Generative AI Case

"The way courts will view the fair use argument for training generative artificial intelligence models with copyrighted materials will be tested Thursday in a San Francisco courtroom, when the first of dozens of such lawsuits reaches summary judgment.

Meta Platforms Inc. and a group of authors including comedian Sarah Silverman will square off before Judge Vince Chhabria, who will decide whether Meta’s use of pirated books to train its AI model Llama qualifies as fair use, or if the issue should be left to a jury."

The AI Copyright Battle: Why OpenAI And Google Are Pushing For Fair Use; Forbes, March 15, 2025

 Virginie Berger , Forbes; The AI Copyright Battle: Why OpenAI And Google Are Pushing For Fair Use

"Furthermore, the ongoing lawsuits against AI firms could serve as a necessary correction to push the industry toward genuinely intelligent machine learning models instead of data-compression-based generators masquerading as intelligence. If legal challenges force AI firms to rethink their reliance on copyrighted content, it could spur innovation toward creating more advanced, ethically sourced AI systems...

Recommendations: Finding a Sustainable Balance

A sustainable solution must reconcile technological innovation with creators' economic interests. Policymakers should develop clear federal standards specifying fair use parameters for AI training, considering solutions such as:

• Licensing and Royalties: Transparent licensing arrangements compensating creators whose work is integral to AI datasets.
• Curated Datasets: Government or industry-managed datasets explicitly approved for AI training, ensuring fair compensation.
• Regulated Exceptions: Clear legal definitions distinguishing transformative use in AI training contexts.

These nuanced policies could encourage innovation without sacrificing creators’ rights.

The lobbying by OpenAI and Google reveals broader tensions between rapid technological growth and ethical accountability. While national security concerns warrant careful consideration, they must not justify irresponsible regulation or ethical compromises. A balanced approach, preserving innovation, protecting creators’ rights, and ensuring sustainable and ethical AI development, is critical for future global competitiveness and societal fairness."

Judge says Meta must defend claim it stripped copyright info from Llama's training fodder; The Register, March 11, 2025

 Thomas Claburn , The Register; Judge says Meta must defend claim it stripped copyright info from Llama's training fodder

"A judge has found Meta must answer a claim it allegedly removed so-called copyright management information from material used to train its AI models.

The Friday ruling by Judge Vince Chhabria concerned the case Kadrey et al vs Meta Platforms, filed in July 2023 in a San Francisco federal court as a proposed class action by authors Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Christopher Golden, who reckon the Instagram titan's use of their work to train its neural networks was illegal.

Their case burbled along until January 2025 when the plaintiffs made the explosive allegation that Meta knew it used copyrighted material for training, and that its AI models would therefore produce results that included copyright management information (CMI) – the fancy term for things like the creator of a copyrighted work, its license and terms of use, its date of creation, and so on, that accompany copyrighted material.

The miffed scribes alleged Meta therefore removed all of this copyright info from the works it used to train its models so users wouldn’t be made aware the results they saw stemmed from copyrighted stuff."

An AI Maker Was Just Found Liable for Copyright Infringement. What Does This Portend for Content Creators and AI Makers?; The Federalist Society, February 25, 2025

 John Blanton Farmer , The Federalist Society; An AI Maker Was Just Found Liable for Copyright Infringement. What Does This Portend for Content Creators and AI Makers?

"In a case decided on February 11, the makers of generative AI (GenAI), such as ChatGPT, lost the first legal battle in the war over whether they commit copyright infringement by using the material of others as training data without permission. The case is called Thomson Reuters Enterprise Centre GmbH v. Ross Intelligence Inc.

If other courts follow this ruling, the cost of building and selling GenAI services will dramatically increase. Such businesses are already losing money.

The ruling could also empower content creators, such as writers, to deny the use of their material to train GenAIs or to demand license fees. Some creators might be unwilling to license use of their material for training AIs due to fear that GenAI will destroy demand for their work."

Court: Training AI Model Based on Copyrighted Data Is Not Fair Use as a Matter of Law; The National Law Review, February 11, 2025

 Joseph A. Meckes, Joseph Grasser of Squire Patton Boggs (US) LLP   - Global IP and Technology Law Blog,  The National Law Review; Court: Training AI Model Based on Copyrighted Data Is Not Fair Use as a Matter of Law

"In what may turn out to be an influential decision, Judge Stephanos Bibas ruled as a matter of law in Thompson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence that creating short summaries of law to train Ross Intelligence’s artificial intelligence legal research application not only infringes Thompson Reuters’ copyrights as a matter of law but that the copying is not fair use. Judge Bibas had previously ruled that infringement and fair use were issues for the jury but changed his mind: “A smart man knows when he is right; a wise man knows when he is wrong.”

At issue in the case was whether Ross Intelligence directly infringed Thompson Reuters’ copyrights in its case law headnotes that are organized by Westlaw’s proprietary Key Number system. Thompson Reuters contended that Ross Intelligence’s contractor copied those headnotes to create “Bulk Memos.” Ross Intelligence used the Bulk Memos to train its competitive AI-powered legal research tool. Judge Bibas ruled that (i) the West headnotes were sufficiently original and creative to be copyrightable, and (ii) some of the Bulk Memos used by Ross were so similar that they infringed as a matter of law...

In other words, even if a work is selected entirely from the public domain, the simple act of selection is enough to give rise to copyright protection."

Meta staff torrented nearly 82TB of pirated books for AI training — court records reveal copyright violations; Tom's Hardware, February 9, 2025

 

Jowi Morales

 , Tom's Hardware; Meta staff torrented nearly 82TB of pirated books for AI training — court records reveal copyright violations

"Facebook parent-company Meta is currently fighting a class action lawsuit alleging copyright infringement and unfair competition, among others, with regards to how it trained LLaMA. According to an X (formerly Twitter) post by vx-underground, court records reveal that the social media company used pirated torrents to download 81.7TB of data from shadow libraries including Anna’s Archive, Z-Library, and LibGen. It then used this information to train its AI models.

The evidence, in the form of written communication, shows the researchers’ concerns about Meta’s use of pirated materials. One senior AI researcher said way back in October 2022, “I don’t think we should use pirated material. I really need to draw a line here.” While another one said, “Using pirated material should be beyond our ethical threshold,” then they added, “SciHub, ResearchGate, LibGen are basically like PirateBay or something like that, they are distributing content that is protected by copyright and they’re infringing it.”"

In AI copyright case, Zuckerberg turns to YouTube for his defense; TechCrunch, January 15, 2025

 

Kyle Wiggers

Maxwell Zeff

, TechCrunch ; In AI copyright case, Zuckerberg turns to YouTube for his defense

"Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears to have used YouTube’s battle to remove pirated content to defend his own company’s use of a data set containing copyrighted e-books, reveals newly released snippets of a deposition he gave late last year.

The deposition, which was part of a complaint submitted to the court by plaintiffs’ attorneys, is related to the AI copyright case Kadrey v. Meta. It’s one of many such cases winding through the U.S. court system that’s pitting AI companies against authors and other IP holders. For the most part, the defendants in these cases – AI companies – claim that training on copyrighted content is “fair use.” Many copyright holders disagree."

AI's assault on our intellectual property must be stopped; Financial Times, December 21, 2024

 Kate Mosse, Financial Times; AI's assault on our intellectual property must be stopped

"Imagine my dismay, therefore, to discover that those 15 years of dreaming, researching, planning, writing, rewriting, editing, visiting libraries and archives, translating Occitan texts, hunting down original 13th-century documents, becoming an expert in Catharsis, apparently counts for nothing. Labyrinth is just one of several of my novels that have been scraped by Meta's large language model. This has been done without my consent, without remuneration, without even notification. This is theft...

AI companies present creators as being against change. We are  not. Every artist I know is already engaging with AI in one way or another. But a distinction needs to be made between AI that can be used in brilliant ways -- for example, medical diagnosis -- and the foundations of AI models, where companies are essentially stealing creatives' work for their own profit. We should not forget that the AI companies rely on creators to build their models. Without strong copyright law that ensures creators can earn a living, AI companies will lack the high-quality material that is essential for their future growth."

Can You Copyright a Vibe?; The New York Times, December 5, 2024

 Sandra E. Garcia , The New York Times; Can You Copyright a Vibe?

"Ms. Gifford claims that Ms. Sheil, 21, not only started to mimic her online persona but also appropriated her entire look. And now she is suing.

Ms. Gifford had copyrighted several of her social media posts in January, after noticing the similarity between Ms. Sheil’s posts and her own. Several photos were submitted as evidence in the lawsuit Ms. Gifford filed this year in a federal court in Texas accusing Ms. Sheil of copyright infringement. But in the carefully curated world of social media, Ms. Gifford has leveled a perhaps more severe charge against her: stealing her vibe...

In several interviews beginning in August, experts said influencers have to navigate a blurry landscape in which assigning credit to who created what can be daunting and, in some cases, impossible.

“There really is a sense that you’re both a creator and a borrower,” said Jeanne Fromer, a professor of intellectual property law at New York University. “Fashion is built on that. All the creative industries — painting, music, movies — they’re all built on borrowing in certain ways from the past and also ideally trying to bring your own spin to something. I don’t know that anyone wants to go too far as a result.""