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Over the past few weeks, there have been a number of news articles and stories about police officers playing popular music during a citizen/officer interaction that is being filmed by the citizen.  For example, Vice reported on a Beverly Hills police officer breaking out his phone and playing over a minute of Sublime’s “Santeria” when the officer discovered that his interaction with a well-known LA-area activist was being live-streamed by the citizen via Instagram.  Similarly, Mashable reported that an Alameda County Sheriff’s deputy played a Taylor Swift song during an encounter.  Why is this happening?  There seems to be a belief that police service, when paired with a musical interlude, will prevent a recording of the interaction from being posted on social media due to algorithms that detect and remove videos incorporating copyrighted music (among other types of content).
Continue Reading Don’t Film So Close To Me: Can Copyrighted Music Keep Vids of Police Encounters Off The Internet?

In this week’s episode of The Briefing from the IP Law Blog, Josh Escovedo and Scott Hervey discuss an update to the litigation over Andy Warhol’s series of portraits of the artist Prince (Andy Warhol Foundation v Goldsmith). They provide a recap of last week’s episode, which covers the Second Circuit decision in favor of Goldsmith, the photographer whose image Warhol used to create the Prince Portraits, and the holding that Warhol’s renditions were not transformative enough to be fair use. That decision overturned a lower court decision in favor of the Warhol Foundation.
Continue Reading The Briefing by the IP Law Blog: Andy Warhol’s Prince Prints – Not Fair Use!? (Part Two)

In this week’s episode, Josh Escovedo and Scott Hervey discuss the litigation over Andy Warhol’s series of portraits of the artist Prince (Andy Warhol Foundation v Goldsmith). Their discussion covers the Second Circuit decision in favor of Goldsmith, the photographer whose image Warhol used to create the Prince Portraits, and the holding that Warhol’s renditions were not transformative enough to be fair use. The decision overturned a lower court decision in favor of the Warhol Foundation.
Continue Reading The Briefing – Andy Warhol’s Prince Prints: Not Fair Use!? (Part One)

New York’s post mortem right-of-publicity statute recently came into effect.  Its previous right-of-publicity laws were an extension of its statutory right of privacy which provided that “any person whose name [or likeness] is used within [New York] for advertising [or trade] purposes without . . . written consent” can sue for an injunction and damages.  Because the statute addressed privacy concerns that dissipated at death, such rights did not extend post mortem.  New York courts have held that because the state’s law affords no common law right of publicity – the statutory grant is exclusive.
Continue Reading I See Dead People…Filing Lawsuits In New York