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A New Kind of Contract for a New Kind of Entertainment Industry
By Shayna Toh The recent return of familiar hosts to late night TV after a five-month hiatus marked the beginning of the end to one of the entertainment industry’s biggest battles in recent years. On October 2nd, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) voted to end their 148-day long strike, allowing over 11,000 writers to return to work under a new deal that the leadership has called “exceptional” with “meaningful gains and protections for writers in every sector of the membership.” In its summary of the deal’s terms, the WGA describes sixteen points of consideration in its agreement with the Alliance of […]
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AI Generated Video Games Are Coming: How Do Game Developers Protect Rights in Their IP?
Stuart Irvin,[*] Winslow Taub[†] and Sam Jungyun Choi[‡] Click here to download a PDF of this article. AI generated video games are coming. What remedies does a video game publisher have when its game is used to train an AI model? If the resulting model generates a new game in the same genre, under what circumstances would the distribution of that new game violate the rights of the original game’s owner? The authors argue that copyright law is uncertain on several issues related to the training of AI models and the use of those models to create new works of authorship. […]
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Authors File Complaint Against OpenAI for Copyright Infringement
By: Alec Winshel Last month, Mona Awad and Paul Tremblay filed a lawsuit against OpenAI for infringement of their works. The complaint is another in a series of cases filed by Matthew Butterick and the Joseph Saveri Law Firm that mount legal challenges against companies developing AI-powered large language models. These models, often referred to as LLMs, are algorithms that utilize artificial intelligence and massive datasets to generate natural-sounding text in response to prompts. ChatGPT, owned by defendant OpenAI, is the most popular LLM, which now tallies more than 100M users. OpenAI feeds on enormous datasets to develop its capabilities. Awad and Tremblay don’t want to be part […]
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ESTABLISHMENT OF THE NBA “BUBBLE” GUIDELINES FOR THE RESUMPTION OF THE 2019-20 SEASON
(PDF Version Here) Eric Zilber[*] TABLE OF CONTENTS[†] Introduction COVID-19 Background The Challenges Facing the NBA Initial Planning The “Bubble” Emerges as a Front-Runner “Bubble” Plans Solidify and the Protocols Phase One Phase Two Phase Three Phase Three-A Phase Four Phase Five Phase Six Conclusion Exhibit A – Spread of COVID-19 Exhibit B – ESPN Wide World of Sports (“WWOS”) Map Exhibit C – Testing Timeline for Players and Essential Staff Exhibit D – Participant Tiers Exhibit E – Masks/Face Coverings During Games Exhibit F – COVID-19 Testing and Monitoring Requirements Introduction On March 11, 2020, the 2019-20 National Basketball Association […]
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All I Want for Christmas is Full Damages for Copyright Infringement
By: Daniel Imakyure Introduction In June 2022, Andy Stone, a.k.a. Vince Vance, brought a copyright infringement action in the US District Court of the Eastern District of Louisiana against singer Mariah Carey, producer Walter Afanasieff, and Sony Music Entertainment.[1] Stone alleged that Carey’s record-breaking[2] holiday standard “All I Want for Christmas is You,” released on her 1994 Merry Christmas album, infringed on his identically titled song, written in 1989.[3] Stone’s song—“All I Want for Christmas is You” by Vince Vance and the Valiants—received airplay during the 1993 Christmas season, including appearances on the Billboard Music Charts.[4] Stone sought damages of $20 […]
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When “Gravy” meets “Roll”: The Future of Interpolation in Music Recording
By: Lea Washington What do you get when you put a roll and gravy together? A lawsuit apparently. The “Rickrollin’” star Rick Astley is suing upcoming rapper Yung Gravy and his team. Gravy’s song “Betty” is the focus of this dispute, as it borrows from the song “Never Gonna Give You Up” which boasts 1.3 billion views on YouTube. Astley’s lawyers say, “In an effort to capitalize off of the immense popularity [defendants] conspired to include a deliberate and nearly indistinguishable imitation of Mr. Astley’s voice throughout the song.” Astley is claiming Gravy and team’s actions were theft since, “Defendants were […]
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The Future of NFL Broadcasting
By: Ben Reichard The first Sunday kicking off the 2022 NFL season was just days away. Like millions of fans across the country, I was both hopeful and anxious for how my team would start the season. But I had another reason to be nervous: I couldn’t figure out a way to watch my beloved Washington Commanders. I had just moved away from the Washington, D.C., region to Boston, and with that relocation, abandoned the Commanders’ media market. If I subscribed to cable, the New England Patriots would be shown on Sunday afternoons. I would only be able to watch […]
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States Can Use Advertising and Consumer Protection Law to Avoid Rolling the Dice with Online Sports Betting
By: Brandon McCoy Prior to Super Bowl Sunday, one of the most popular gambling days of the year, Massachusetts opened sportsbooks in its three brick-and-mortar casinos: Encore Boston Harbor, MGM Springfield, and Plainridge Park Casino. The state joined 32 others and the District of Columbia in offering sports betting, either online or in person. Soon after the projected biggest betting event of all time, Massachusetts will join 23 states plus D.C. in offering online wagering. Sports betting, both online and in person, has been an activity that, until recently, has been restricted to places like Las Vegas and Atlantic […]
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Copyright Has a Preemption Problem That’s Destined for the Supreme Court
By: Alec Winshel Fans of radio personality Howard Stern and legendary rapper 50 Cent had reason to rejoice in 2013 when the two sat down for an interview on The Howard Stern Show. After discussing rap feuds and the joys of meeting Oprah, the celebrities parted ways for nearly a decade. However, last month brought the stars together once again in a starkly different context: central figures in a burgeoning legal conundrum concerning the power of the federal Copyright Act. The issue of copyright preemption poses questions of fairness for artists and consistency for the federal court system. Don’t hold your […]
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Supreme Court Considers the Future of Copyright’s Fair Use Doctrine
By: Alec Winshel On October 12th, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Inc v. Goldsmith. Litigants traded arguments scrutinizing the boundaries of artistic license while Justices lobbed hypotheticals that probed the nature of book-to-film adaptations and the boundless creative implications of color. The hearing was a departure from the court’s recent spate of highly politicized cases. Laughter echoed in the chamber as Justice Thomas hinted at his waning fandom of Prince and lawyers admitted their insufficiently intimate knowledge of Lord of the Rings. It was a humorous proceeding that […]
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Racism and The Rooney Rule: How American and English Football Are Looking To Tackle The Problem.
By: Lincoln T. Lair[1] Despite their differences, English Football (association football) and American Football share many similarities. They are both the most watched sport in their respective countries, fans revolve their weekends and lives around their team or club’s schedule, and they both provide a sense of comradery and passion. Unfortunately, the comradery for fans in both sports can be blocked by biases and prejudices, and their passion for the game can switch to an unrelenting and irrational hatred in a matter of seconds. This breeds an unwanted similarity between the two sports: racism. Racial Abuse in English Football One instance […]
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Dawn of the Dead: Virtual Avatars & New York’s Right of Publicity
By: Dhruva Krishna I. Virtual Avatars: Lazarus to Luke Skywalker, Deepfakes to Dystopia Virtual avatars are digital recreations of an individual or their performance. Entertainers now regularly appear in all forms of media as virtual avatars–in video games, as holograms, and as younger versions of themselves in film. COVID-19 has increased the prominence of virtual avatars. In April 2020, Travis Scott broke records for his Fortnite performance, drawing 12.3 million viewers and reportedly earning $20 million for a nine-minute digital concert. The virtual concert platform, Wave, has produced virtual events for artists like The Weeknd, Lindsey Sterling, John Legend, and […]