Fair Use

New Media Rights Executive Director Art Neill, James Thomas (CWSL ’24) and Assistant Director Erika Lee teamed up to write about an issue that many legal minds are grappling with: how does copyright law apply to the training of artificial intelligence? The rampant popularity of generative artificial intelligence in the last few years has resulted in a number of different lawsuits related to AI, including its use, training and the resulting outputs.  

Our latest article, A Framework for Applying Copyright Law to the Training of Textual Generative Artificial Intelligence, was recently published in the University of Texas Intellectual Property Law Journal’s summer edition. The article delves into the complex legal landscape surrounding the use of copyrighted works to train generative artificial intelligence models. 

New Media Rights recently worked on the podcast A CRISPR Bite, produced by Corinne Ruff and the GEAP3 Network (Genome Editing and Agricultural Policy, Practice, and Public Perceptions).

CRISPR gene-editing technology came out as a massive biotech breakthrough in the last decade, but most people have still never heard of it. In a new five-part podcast series, called A CRISPR Bite, food anthropologist Dr. Lauren Crossland-Marr takes listeners into the labs where researchers are tinkering with food genes, to help break down the problems they’re hoping to solve – and what’s at stake. READ MORE.

The Copyright Office is currently conducting a study on Artificial Intelligence and Copyright, focusing on the copyright law and policy issues raised by artificial intelligence technology. On October 30^th, New Media Rights submitted comments to the Copyright Office about legal issues surrounding the use of copyrightable inputs in training datasets for artificial intelligence, primarily whether or not such training uses are fair use.

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Please join us for a free panel on Artificial Intelligence called "Algorithmic Justice: The New Frontier" on October 12th at 5pm at California Western School of Law. This event will help kick off the school's Law, Justice, and Technology Initiative as well as the IP, Privacy, and Media Law concentration. You can register at the Eventbrite page for the event. Come join us!

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Assistant Director Erika Lee and Student Fellow Cristina Meisterling recently presented at the KPBS Explore Local Content Program orientation workshops!

KPBS Explore is a program established to help provide more local programming for San Diego audiences. Most of the programs that have been part of the Explore program are created by local San Diego producers who then have their programs broadcast or distributed via KPBS.  You can read more about the program in general here:  https://www.kpbs.org/tv/kpbs-explore

Erika and Cristina spoke about legal issues filmmakers, podcasters and other content creators need to be aware of throughout all stages of production, as well as how copyright and music licensing affects production. READ MORE

New Media Rights Executive Director Art Neill and Assistant Director Erika Lee were guests on the Pop Culture Dective: Audio Files Podcast!

We joined host Jonathan McIntosh to discuss the importance of fair use and how it interacts with YouTube's Content ID system. Fair use is a critical tool for the media criticism field, but also for many other creative ventures. You can find the podcast on the Pop Culture Detective: Audio Files website, YouTube, and wherever you normally get your podcasts!

The United States Copyright Office recently published its final rule for implementation of the procedures that are to govern the initial stages of a Copyright Claims Board (CCB) proceeding. The CCB will be a new forum where copyright small claims disputes can be heard.

It will have a significant impact on creators and technology businesses. Disputes previously too costly to bring to federal court can now be brought to the CCB, which allows claims up to $30,000 (no more than $15,000 per work). Many creators will either face disputes brought against them as respondents, or consider using the process as an enforcement mechanism. 

The final rule establishes a process for bringing claims at the CCB, and directly cites New Media Rights’ comments, written by California Western School of Law 2L Mariana Perez, Executive Director Art Neill, and Assistant Director Erika Lee, multiple times. Our comments discussed law school clinic participation, concerns regarding how respondents receive adequate awareness of the claims against them, the need to collect data on CCB proceedings and revisit and improve CCB processes, and various grammar and typographical errors in the proposed rules. READ MORE

Every three years the Copyright Office meets to reconsider exemptions to the DMCA Anti-Circumvention provisions. These exemptions are critical to ensuring creators and consumers’ ability to bypass technological protection measures on copyrighted works, allowing them to make fair use of works in a variety of circumstances.  Continuing our participation every since 2009, NMR staff and California Western law students submitted worked on behalf of creators and consumers to maintain three key exemptions. These exemptions help ensure that documentary filmmakers and noncommercial video creators can access materials in fair use for their work, and that consumers can install the apps and software of their choice on their smartphones.

On October 27, 2021 the Copyright Office revealed the results of their 2021 Anti-Circumvention Rulemaking. All three of the exemptions NMR petitioned to renew have been renewed, and we are cited 8 times in the new recommendation.