EFF to Courts: Don’t Rewrite Copyright Over AI Hype

Electronic Frontier Foundation: The history of technology is rife with copyright panics. In the 1980s, major rightsholders ran to Congress and the courts, claiming that videotape recorders (VTR) were “to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.” Then, the Supreme Court declined to embrace the hype, noting that the VTR was capable of all kinds of non-infringing uses, like time-shifting and cautioning courts to avoid rewriting copyright law in response to new technologies. We believe that courts now should be similarly wary about the hype surrounding AI.

Dolly Parton Turned Down Elvis. That May Have Been Her Smartest Move

www.hollywoodreporter.com: There’s a famous story in industry lore about how, back in the ‘70s, Elvis Presley’s team had come to Parton with an offer for The King to cover “I Will Always Love You.” It was a potentially life-changing offer, even for an already famous Parton, to have one of the world’s most beloved artists turn a song she’d written into a likely smash hit. But it came with strings attached: While Elvis didn’t write a word of the song, his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, demanded he get 50 percent of the publishing credit.

Securing Music Rights Is The Toughest Part Of Olympic Athletes’ Routines

Butts In the Seats: Entertainment lawyer Gordon Firemark and Tamera Bennett recently did a podcast episode addressing some intellectual property and copyright issues which had been in the news. One of the problems they covered was the controversy over music licensing rights during Olympic skating and other routines.

Pharrell Williams Isn’t A Musician: Chad Hugo Copyright Lawsuit

www.forbes.com: What started as an ugly music biz divorce between Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams – once the most dynamic duo of pop music production – has now morphed into a strange copyright fight over who actually created the music and who took the credit on several tracks.

AI-generated art can’t be copyrighted after Supreme Court declines to review the rule

The Verge: The US Supreme Court has declined to hear a case over whether AI-generated art can obtain a copyright, as reported earlier by Reuters. The Monday decision comes after Stephen Thaler, a computer scientist from Missouri, appealed a court’s decision to uphold a ruling that found AI-generated art can’t be copyrighted.

Motion Picture Association Pushes ByteDance to Curb Seedance 2.0

variety.com: Speaking on behalf of its seven member companies, the MPA sent a cease and desist letter to ByteDance’s Culver City, Calif., office demanding that it stop training on the studios’ movies and TV shows, and that it implement safeguards to stop users from generating copyrighted material.

Spanish Olympics Figure Skater Gets Minions Routine Approved

brobible.com: The Winter Olympics don’t officially kick off until Friday, but there’s already been some controversy courtesy of a Spanish figure skater who said he’d been blocked from performing his Minions-themed routine on the world’s biggest stage. Thankfully, it appears reason has prevailed after the internet bullied Universal into backing down from the copyright claim that threatened to derail his trip to Italy.

Miscommunication Between Artist and Olympic Figure Skater Highlights the Mess of Music Copyright

www.vice.com: On February 8, 2026, Canadian artist Seb McKinnon publicly questioned the use of his song “The Return” after learning U.S. Olympic figure skater Amber Glenn choreographed her free skate to the track. McKinnon posted on X/Twitter, claiming Glenn used the song “without permission” and that it “aired all over the world.” He then asked, “What? Is that usual practice for the Olympics?”

Statutory Damages: The Fuel of Copyright-based Censorship

Electronic Frontier Foundation: Imagine every post online came with a bounty of up to $150,000 paid to anyone who finds it violates opaque government rules—all out of the pocket of the platform. Smaller sites could be snuffed out, and big platforms would avoid crippling liability by aggressively blocking, taking down, and penalizing speech that even possibly violates these rules. In turn, users would self-censor, and opportunists would turn accusations into a profitable business.

Betty Boop, Blondie and Nancy Drew enter the public domain in 2026

PBS News: Betty Boop and "Blondie" are joining Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh in the public domain. The first appearances of the classic cartoon and comic characters are among the pieces of intellectual property whose 95-year U.S. copyright maximum has been reached, putting them in the public domain on Jan. 1. That means creators can use and repurpose them without permission or payment.

Musicians Can Win Back Music Rights Globally, Appeals Court Rules

www.billboard.com: A federal appeals court issued a first-of-its-kind ruling that says musicians can enforce U.S. copyright termination rules across the globe, adopting a novel legal theory that record labels and publishers have warned will disrupt “a half-century of settled industry norms.”

Public Domain in 2026: 'Georgia on My Mind,' 'Dream a Little Dream of Me'

www.rollingstone.com: Each year, dozens of classic songs, movies, and other cultural works reach the 95-year copyright maximum in the U.S., officially becoming part of the public domain. In 2026, a few beloved compositions from the 1930s are now free for anyone to use.

Sorry, But You Can’t Copyright AI — One Filmmaker Just Found Out the Hard Way

No Film School: There is an old biblical saying, "You reap what you sow," which essentially means you get out of the world what you put in. So excuse me while I pile onto an AI filmmaker, who posted on Twitter that their prompts were being stolen by the outside world.

You Can't Use Copyrighted Characters in OpenAI's Sora Anymore and People Are Freaking Out

gizmodo.com: The complete copyright-free-for-all approach that OpenAI took to its new AI video generation model, Sora 2, lasted all of one week. After initially requiring copyright holders to opt out of having their content appear in Sora-generated videos, CEO Sam Altman announced that the company will be moving to an “opt-in” model that will “give rightsholders more granular control over generation of characters”—and Sora obsessives are not taking it particularly well.

Taylor Swift Lawsuit Dismissed: Judge Rules Lyrics Didn't Copy Poems

www.billboard.com: A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit claiming Taylor Swift stole lyrics for 15 of her songs from a self-published Florida poet, ruling the accuser was trying to claim ownership over basic ideas and “common words.”

Judge: Anthropic’s $1.5B settlement is being shoved “down the throat of authors”

Ars Technica: At a hearing Monday, US District Judge William Alsup blasted a proposed $1.5 billion settlement over Anthropic's rampant piracy of books to train AI. The proposed settlement comes in a case where Anthropic could have owed more than $1 trillion in damages after Alsup certified a class that included up to 7 million claimants whose works were illegally downloaded by the AI company.

Guidelines for Using Aggregate Streaming Platforms for Performing Arts Content

AMT Lab @ CMU: For arts organizations looking to reach audiences through online content, there are numerous approaches, including posting subscriber-only content to their websites and posting free videos on platforms like YouTube. In the broader entertainment landscape, streaming via services that aggregate content has become a popular way to watch film and television. This article examines the viability of sharing performing arts content on third-party streaming platforms that aggregate content as opposed to single-entity streaming channels.

Viral TikTok sea shanties show what is broken with copyright law

Business Insider: When Nathan Evans, a 26-year-old Scottish postal worker, began uploading videos of himself singing sea shanties to TikTok several months ago, "going viral" may not have been on his mind. But as with all stories of virality, the beginning is less important than what happened next.

Russian Sequel To Broadway Musical Raises Copyright Concerns

www.forbes.com: Lovers of the Broadway musical First Date will need to brush up on their Russian to watch the sequel. Last month, the Broadway Moscow Theatre Company presented a sequel to the short-lived Broadway musical First Date. Named Lovers' Day, the new musical catches up with the original characters, who fell in love after their first date, as they now plan their wedding.

The company that has a monopoly on ice cream truck music

thehustle.co: In 1973, an electrical engineer named Bob Nichols was watching the film The Sting when a song on the soundtrack — Scott Joplin’s 1902 ragtime hit, “The Entertainer” — caught his ear.

The right clip of that song, Bob realized, would make for an irresistible ice cream truck jingle.