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Monday, April 18, 2016 saw the Supreme Court of the United States deny the Author’s Guild petition for writ of certiorari in the long running lawsuit against Google and their mass digitization of library books. Google had scanned complete copies of books provided to them by participating libraries and made them searchable, and when asked, displayed verbatim portions of the text. The Second Circuit had pronounced this “transformative” even though the copies were “mirror images” of the original texts. The Eleventh Circuit, by contrast, has ruled that mirror image copies are not “transformative” as has the Sixth Circuit. What’s going on here? Nova Southeastern University's Copyright Officer, Stephen Carlisle, J.D., looks at the cases and the reasoning, and suggests that maybe it’s just as well the Supreme Court passed this one up.

On March 29, 2016, a huge study on the volume and effectiveness of DMCA takedowns was published. Titled “Notice and Takedown in Everyday Practice,” the authors made some rather stunning assertions which were widely reported in the news media. Problem is that a lot of what was reported was flat out wrong, and could have been corrected by simply reading the study. The news media that reported on the story, including The Washington Post, CNBC and Variety also seemed to have missed the fact that on the very first page it is revealed that Google funded this study, one that nicely fell in line with Google’s interests. Nova Southeastern University's Copyright Officer, Stephen Carlisle, J.D., takes an in-depth look at the 147-page study and finds it has numerous flaws, including glossing over major problems, making assumptions that just don’t hold up, and being contradicted by Google’s own transparency report.

Last week saw a settlement in the closely watched fair use case of Equals Three v. Jukin Media. It’s a good thing Equals Three settled the case. The jury would have ruled that all 48 videos at issue were not fair use, and damages would have been assessed accordingly. This reflects a growing problem, namely that fair use is being manipulated from a fairly complex legal defense, to a Harry Potter style magical incantation that, in the minds of the content borrower, makes all copyright problems go away. NSU's Copyright Officer, Stephen Carlisle, J.D., examines the growing trend of claiming any use of someone else’s material is “fair use,” without any regard to whether the claim has any basis in fact or law.

On February 22, 2016, the U.S. Copyright Office released its nearly 120 page report on whether the U.S. Copyright Act conferred upon the copyright holder the exclusive right to “make available” the copyrighted work in electronic formats. Essentially, this provides that “authors of literary and artistic works shall enjoy the exclusive right of authorizing any communication to the public of their works, by wire or wireless means.” But what does that really mean, and why should you care? Nova Southeastern University's Copyright Officer, Stephen Carlisle, J.D., examines the report and its findings and explains how this right works for you when placing your copyrighted works online.