The internet’s domain names have become potentially trademarkable following a decision by the US Supreme Court today that Booking.com can in fact be registered with America’s Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) – against officials’ objections. The near-unanimous decision [PDF] – Justice Stephen Breyer was the sole rebel – went against the PTO’s legal arguments that Read more about The internet becomes trademarkable, sort of, with near-unanimous Supreme Court ruling on Booking.com[…]

A popular website with a comprehensive database of repair manuals for ventilators and other medical devices has received a letter from a medical equipment company saying that its copyrights are being infringed. Kyle Wiens, CEO of the repair website iFixit—which posts guides on how to repair anything from sewing machines to video game consoles—shared the Read more about Steris, Medical Device Maker Threatens iFixit Over Ventilator Repair Project, publishing manuals[…]

Back in March, the Internet Archive launched its National Emergency Library, a program that made roughly 1.4 million books available to the public without the usual waitlists. But on Wednesday, the organization announced it was ending the program two weeks early after four major publishers decided to sue Internet Archive for copyright infringement. Internet Archive Read more about Internet Archive Ends Free Ebook Program Early due to money grubbing copyright enforcers suing them for being a library[…]

Fed up with the DRM in a General Electric refrigerator that pushed the owner to buy expensive manufacturer-approved replacement water filters, an anonymous hacker went to the trouble of buying a domain name and setting up a website at gefiltergate.com to pen a screed about appliance digital rights restriction management (DRM) and how to bypass Read more about Someone got so fed up with GE fridge DRM – yes, fridge DRM – they made a whole website on how to bypass it[…]

The real Space Force may be going down in flames against the fictional Space Force: According to the Hollywood Reporter, the newly founded military branch appears to be losing a trademark battle with the Netflix comedy show of the same name. Netflix “has outmaneuvered the U.S. government to secure trademark rights to ‘Space Force’ in Read more about Space Force Losing Trademark Battle With Netflix’s Space Force[…]

In one fell swoop, Facebook may have changed its mind about how the online news media will operate from here on out. Undermining a now age-old assumption, Facebook told Ars Technica on Thursday that embedding from Instagram may not shield news organizations from freely cross-posting on their sites. A spokesperson said: While our terms allow Read more about Did Instagram Just Say It’s Rewriting Online Copyright? Use their embedded API at your peril[…]

Today, member companies [Note only four members – ed] of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Internet Archive (“IA”) in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. The suit asks the Court to enjoin IA’s mass scanning, public display, and distribution of entire literary Read more about Publishers bizarrely File Suit Against Internet Archive for Systematic Mass Scanning and Distribution of Literary Works[…]

There are a variety of opinions concerning the Internet Archive’s National Emergency Library in response to the pandemic. I’ve made it clear in multiple posts why I believe the freakout from some publishers and authors is misguided, and that the details of the program are very different than those crying about it have led you Read more about Libraries Have Never Needed Permission To Lend Books, And The Move To Change That Is A Big Problem[…]

For those of us of a certain age, MTV defined culture. It was where we learned about not just music, but wider pop culture. Of course, MTV lost its cultural place atop the mountaintop with the rise of the internet, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a key source of culture in the 1980s. Read more about Copyright Making Sure That MTV Remains An Irrelevant Relic, Rather Than A Cultural Icon[…]

Much of the fun of internet drama comes from its frivolousness, but sometimes an online shitfest points to something bigger. Last week, the AI-powered furry art site thisfursonadoesnotexist did just that, igniting a fandom firestorm while also highlighting an important debate about digital art. Trained on more than 55,000 images pulled (without permission) from a Read more about The Internet Furry Drama Raising Big Questions About Artificial Intelligence and Copyright[…]