What’s Mine is Yours?

What’s Mine is Yours?

When I was younger, my dad told me that he worked on “artificial intelligence” after graduating college. I thought this was the coolest job ever. What if my dad was part of the team that made a self-aware AI like in the movies? He told me that AI didn’t really work that way. In fact, he worked on a smaller piece of AI technology dealing with sorting data based on algorithms. I didn’t really understand what he meant at the time, but it still seemed pretty neat. Continue reading “What’s Mine is Yours?”

Sports, Photography, and Copyright: Who Has the Rights?

For sports fans, photographs taken during competition can become iconic. Muhammad Ali standing over Joe Frazier, the United States Hockey Team celebrating the “Miracle On Ice,” and Tiger Woods at the Masters are a few examples. Sports photos are highly marketable, but who owns and has the rights to use these photos?

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“Scamilton” – Copyright Troubles in “Way-Off” Broadway Productions

When I was in high school, the annual musical was always a big deal. They would do renditions of famous productions such as Fiddler on the Roof, The Sound of Music, and even Disney’s High School Musical. Although I had long since graduated from high school by the time my favorite musical Hamilton became popular, I noticed that there weren’t really productions of it outside of Broadway sponsored productions. Perhaps a recent controversy regarding the threat of a copyright lawsuit and an unauthorized Hamilton production at a Texas church helps explain why…

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Copyright Trivia: Music Edition

Which of the following acts violates copyright? Choose all that apply.

  1. Photocopying living American composer Philip Glass’ “Akhnaten” (1983) scores for a famous orchestra to perform for a live audience without paying.
  2. Using a portion of Frederic Chopin’s “Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2” (1830) in your new pop song.
  3. Recording your own quintet performance of “Strum” (2006) by Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Composer Jessie Montgomery with her permission.
  4. Playing “Married Life” by Michael Giacchino, the song from Disney Pixar’s adorable film UP on FM/AM radio at the bookstore.

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Jodorowsky’s Dune – How Understanding Copyright Can Save You $3 Million

Recently, the concept of NFTs, or Non-Fungible Tokens, have taken over the internet as the new, hot investment. Unfortunately, so too have people’s misconceptions about what owning an NFT actually is. Many investors think that owning an NFT of a digital image means owning the underlying copyright to the image. Spoiler alert – it doesn’t.

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“Righting” about Copyright, Part 2

I was excited to take the Intellectual Property Survey course at Loyola with Professor Ho in the fall of 2021. However, when the class got to the topic of copyright, I struggled with two topics in that area, one of which was “improper appropriation.” This dealt with a part of the copyright infringement test that determined whether there was substantial similarity between the two works at issue based only on their protectable expression as I discussed in “Righting about Copyright, Part 1.”

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