Lee Gesmer
“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 I ve written about Section 230 many times over the years on this blog, and the arc those posts trace is [ ] The post Commonwealth v. Meta: When Platform Design Becomes the…
On June 2, 2026, the Fifth Circuit heard argument in Emmerich Newspapers, Inc. v. Particle Media, Inc., the first time a federal court of appeals outside the Ninth Circuit has had to decide whether embedding content that lives on someone else s server infringes the copyright owner s exclusive right of public display. I took up that [ ] The post Is Embedding Someone Else s Image Copyright…
Lee Gesmer and Andrew Updegrove In 2023, we wrote about the D.C. Circuit s decision in American Society for Testing and Materials v. Public.Resource.Org (ASTM II), which held that a nonprofit organization s free online publication of technical standards incorporated by reference (IBR) into law constituted copyright fair use. We expressed concern that the decision underestimated the [ ] The post…
This post is the third in a series following Sony Music Entertainment v. Cox Communications through the courts. In May 2024 I wrote about the Fourth Circuit s decision, which reversed a $1 billion jury verdict against Cox on vicarious liability grounds while affirming a finding of contributory infringement, and sent the case back for a [ ] The post Why Bother With the DMCA? The Supreme Court s…
When the Massachusetts Noncompetition Agreement Act (MNAA) took effect in October 2018, I described the law in detail and wrote that employers and employees were entering “a new era” in noncompete law. The statute imposed formalities, created new employee protections, and limited the enforceable duration of noncompetes. But it also drew a set of carefully [ ] The post The Massachusetts…
Update: On March 26, 2026 the Supreme Court decided this case in favor of Cox. The Court held that an internet service provider would be liable for infringing content posted by a third party only when it induced users infringement or provided a service tailored to infringement. **************** Can your internet provider be held liable [ ] The post Sony v. Cox Heads to the Supreme Court appeared…
“The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it s not going to happen. I m fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years.” [ ] The post The Celestial Jukebox: Copyright Law and the Business of Music appeared first…
Update: the same day I posted this article Bartz and Anthropic announced that they had settled the case. The terms are as yet unknown, and the settlement will need to be approved by the judge. However, this topic is not moot it could easily arise in one of the many genAI copyright cases still [ ] The post Did Anthropic Waive Attorney-Client Privilege? appeared first on Mass Law Blog .
The United States is in a race to achieve global dominance in artificial intelligence (AI). Whoever has the largest AI ecosystem will set global AI standards and reap broad economic and military benefits. Just like we won the space race, it is imperative that the United States and its allies win this race. . . [ ] The post Fair Use or Theft? The Copyright War Behind Generative AI appeared first on…
The recent blockbuster decisions in Bartz v. Anthropic and Kadrey v. Meta have raised a number of important and controversial issues. On the facts, both cases held that using copyright-protected works to train large language models was fair use. Still, AI industry executives shouldn’t be too quick to celebrate. Bartz held that Anthropic is liable [ ] The post Kadrey v. Meta: Will Market Dilution…