Author Archives: mwillee

If you’ve spent anytime online over the past few months, you’ve undoubtedly come across AI creations that are at once amusing and offputting—computer-generated images created from human-input prompts that look and read like something refracted through a series of funhouse mirrors. It all makes for a bit of fun for people looking to distract fromContinue reading “Copyright Faces an Uncertain Future with AI”

If we’re being honest, most of us are largely in the dark when it comes to the terms of the royalty agreements between labels, artists and streaming services. We know they get paid—there’s not a Napster or Limewire currently running afoul of musicians ans record executives alike—but as to the percentage of revenue shared, orContinue reading “Are Comedians Fairly Compensated By Streaming Services?”

Most of the stories covered on this blog feature one company coming down hard on some business or individual for infringing upon their intellectual property rights, because that’s how most IP stories go. The actions taken within those stories makes sense in a way befitting early-21st century capitalism, which is to say that big, wealthyContinue reading “Can A Lax Approach to Copyright Actually Be a Benefit?”

Are famous artists more prone to copy (or, more generously interpreted, borrow) from other artists, or are they simply more likely to be either caught out or targeted by other musicians or rightsholders for these perceived indiscretions? If we believe that they’re not any different from other artists, save for being more talented and/or luckierContinue reading “Taylor Swift Loses Bid to Dismiss “Shake It Off” Copyright Case”

As has been noted before, it’s particularly hard for rightsholders to nail down exactly who to blame for copyright violations on the internet. There’s the obvious answer — the people who are actually committing the infringement — but they can be hard to actually track down and are typically just one of thousands doing similarly bad things, so stopping them doesn’t do much to solve the problem on a larger scale. And so many of those rightsholders go after those who serve as middlemen and women for the legion of copyright infringers, be they platforms or internet service providers or any other service that has some incidental role in the act, even without direct knowledge.