Cutthroats in the Bahamas! May 11, 1717: Blackbeard sets up camp on the island of New Providence and is operating as a pirate in the Caribbean during the spring of 1717. The Bahamas has become overrun by pirates. blackbeardsqueenannesrevenge.blogspot.com/2018/05/cutt...

The class action lawsuit, filed in New York, accuses Meta—and its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally—of building its Llama AI service with unauthorized copies knowingly sourced from illegal pirate sites. publishingperspectives.com/2026/05/publ...

Copyright infringement does not cease to matter merely because the copy is useful to a machine rather than readable by a human. artistrightswatch.com/2026/05/06/m...

Five of the country’s largest book and journal publishers along with bestselling author Scott Turow have joined together to file a class action lawsuit against Meta and its founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, for willful infringement of millions of works. www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

Nearly 120,000 authors and other copyright holders are seeking a share of a $1.5 billion class-action settlement with Anthropic over the company's unauthorized use of their books in artificial-intelligence training, according to a ​filing in California federal court www.reuters.com/legal/govern...

Every day is "Earth Day" as we celebrate our planet and oceans! See our ocean stock footage. www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

‘Tech companies believe in intellectual property, but not yours.” Great piece in The Atlantic pointing out that AI companies spend huge amounts of money simultaneously (i) defending their own IP and (ii) arguing that they can use other people’s for free. www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

“The AI companies are claiming fair use, but this argument is bogus,. While they claim it’s fair to use the work of creators as training data, they do multimillion-dollar deals with rights holders and publishers like Disney and Condé Nast and Vox and Warner Music.” techcrunch.com/2026/03/18/p...

Your voice matters now more than ever. Speak up today to ensure your creativity is respected, protected, and fairly compensated. To make your voice heard, we’ve prepared a letter you can quickly and easily send to your Congressional representatives. copyrightalliance.org/get-involved...

Blackbeard's Lieutenant Attacks! March 28, 1718: One of Blackbeard's lieutenants, Captain Richard and his sloop Revenge, attacks the Protestant Caesar out of Boston captained by William Wyer. blackbeardsqueenannesrevenge.blogspot.com/2018/03/blac...

Like a number of other providers of pirated content, the Archive presents itself as a non-profit seeking altruistically to provide open-source knowledge to all & sundry. It is more than happy to provide unauthorized access to OPC (Other People’s Content). hughstephensblog.net/2026/03/23/a...

Schmidt told the students to go ahead and download whatever they need to build an accurate “test” version of their AI product. If nobody uses your product, then it doesn’t matter that you stole all the content.” www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

Since most leading AI companies sourced massive of amounts of pirated works from known criminal-level piracy services (and in some cases re-distributed those works), their so-called legal defenses are starting to border on the comically absurd. copyrightalliance.org/meta-propose...

An “age-old” truth in copyright law “is reproduction itself violates the copyright—that’s part of what the right is,” Judge Richard C. Wesley said Wednesday. news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/judge...

The overwhelming response to the petition shows that there is widespread recognition that the Restatement is flawed and would be harmful if relied upon by courts and practitioners. copyrightrestatement.org/press-release/

In a complaint filed at a New York federal court last week, they accuse Anna’s Archive of staggering copyright infringement by hosting 63 million books and 95 million papers, most of which are pirated. torrentfreak.com/major-publis...

Wixen Music Publishing alleges that Meta wants to “drastically cut payments to human songwriters” and replace them with free AI-generated music. www.digitalmusicnews.com/2026/01/27/w...

“Anna’s Archive is a brazen pirate operation that steals and distributes millions of literary works while outrageously offering access to AI developers in exchange for crypto payments. To fight back, we must use all available tools.” publishers.org/news/publish...

As A.I. systems ingest copyrighted works at scale, courts, creators and companies are redefining what protection means. observer.com/2026/03/copy...

“If a third-party promoter can use editorial images for marketing and social media promotion without permission or compensation, the practical value of copyright is significantly diminished. awfulannouncing.com/college-bask...

More than 700 creators have signed a proclamation denouncing unauthorized use of news, movie, recording, photography and other content by AI models as stealing. ipcloseup.com/2026/01/27/c...

Benjamin Franklin's Ode to Blackbeard! 1719: A sailor's song believed to be penned by Benjamin Franklin, at age 13, upon learning of Blackbeard's death. blackbeardsqueenannesrevenge.blogspot.com/2018/02/benj...

Join our No Artists No Art campaign on social media and by speaking up about the importance of protecting working creatives and the value we bring to society, culture, and the economy. graphicartistsguild.org/NANA

The court, in reversing in part a district court’s grant of summary judgment, emphasized that a service provider could not “curate[d] its collection of images for display” and still preserve its safe harbor status www.vitallaw.com/news/copyrig...

The Copyright Labeling & Ethical AI Reporting Act would require companies file a notice with the Register of Copyrights that detail the copyrighted works used to train datasets for an AI model. The notice would apply retroactively to models already available. deadline.com/2026/02/sena...

Blackbeard Dodges Trouble! February 1717: Records of the time indicate the HMS Scarborough, a 32 gun fifth-rate British warship and recognized pirate hunter, was in the vicinity of Blackbeard and his pirate crew near Nevis, West Indies. blackbeardsqueenannesrevenge.blogspot.com/2018/02/blac...

Send a letter to your Congressional Representatives to continue to encourage them to stand up for creators. copyrightalliance.org/get-involved...

North Carolina initially agreed in 2013 to stop the copyright violations & pay Allen $15,000 for unauthorized use. Then, in 2015, North Carolina passed “Blackbeard’s Law,” which allowed state agencies to freely use materials related to shipwrecks in their possession. petapixel.com/2026/01/29/p...

COPYRIGHT—Sovereign immunity will have to wait another day. Allen discovered that his work had been uploaded to an NC-operated YouTube channel and onto other social media platforms. Two years later, the State formally commandeered the footage for itself.. www.vitallaw.com/news/copyrig....

The original copyright infringement lawsuit was filed in 2023 by a group of illustrators and writers. Now Cengage & the trade publisher Hachette Book Group, are asking to enter the case to represent all publishers whose rights have also infringed by Google. www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

Blackbeard's Plunder! Late 1717-early 1718: Reports cite Blackbeard & his pirate crew on the Queen Anne's Revenge, plundering vessels near St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Nevis, Antigua, Puerto Rico & Hispaniola (now Haiti & Dominican Republic). blackbeardsqueenannesrevenge.blogspot.com/2018/01/blac...

A U.S. District Judge refused to throw out three of the publisher’s copyright infringement claims which accused OpenAI of distributing copies of its copyrighted works with the copyright management information removed, in violation of the DMCA. www.courthousenews.com/judge-advanc...

Disney & OpenAI are affirming a shared commitment to the responsible use of AI that protects user safety & the rights of creators. The companies will advance human-centered AI that respects the creative industries & expands what is possible for storytelling. thewaltdisneycompany.com/disney-opena...

AI models are built out of content & data these companies take without getting permission, without offering compensation to all the humans whose writing & ideas & videos & voices & thoughts & labor & time & perspective go into making these products valuable. journal.hitrecord.org/p/ai-compani...

A new bill that is being proposed wants to make it less expensive for visual artists to protect their work. Called the Visual Artists Copyright Reform Act of 2025 (VACRA), it wants to reduce fees associated with copyright protection. petapixel.com/2025/12/17/p...

Blackbeard's First Prize! December 13, 1716: Henry Timberlake, the master of the 40 ton brigantine 'Lamb' loaded with a cargo of barrel staves and shingles, reports he was overtaken by two pirate vessels off western Hispaniola. blackbeardsqueenannesrevenge.blogspot.com/2017/12/blac...

Blackbeard Bests Bostock! December 5, 1717: Thache overtakes the merchant sloop Margaret off the coast of Anguilla. Her captain & his crew, remain Thache's prisoners for about eight hours, and are forced to watch as their sloop is ransacked. blackbeardsqueenannesrevenge.blogspot.com/2020/12/blac...

Piracy Continues, But It's Not Blackbeard! November 22, 1719: Lt. Robert Maynard of the HMS Pearl complains to the Lords of the Admiralty that the bounty due to him for killing and capturing Blackbeard and his crew has not been paid. blackbeardsqueenannesrevenge.blogspot.com/2022/11/blog...

Blackbeard Breathes His Last! As Maynard and Blackbeard came face to face the pirate received a pistol shot while swinging his heavy cutlass and snapping Maynard's sword. blackbeardsqueenannesrevenge.blogspot.com/2018/11/blac...

The platforms not only made searching for infringing copies impossible, but they often stalled or simply stopped responding to DMCA takedowns. Stolen videos would stay up for months, getting tens of millions of views while my YouTube originals faltered. copyrightalliance.org/storm-chaser...

Blackbeard's Shipwreck Found! November 21, 1996: Intersal Inc., a private research firm working under permit from the state of North Carolina, discovers the wreck believed to be the Queen Anne’s Revenge (QAR). blackbeardsqueenannesrevenge.blogspot.com/2018/11/blac...

Judge Colleen McMahon held that “substitutive summaries”—non-verbatim outputs that mirror the expressive structure and journalistic storytelling choices of the originals—may plausibly infringe copyright. That was enough to let the claims move forward. copyrightlately.com/court-rules-...

Trouble On The Horizon for Blackbeard! November 17, 1718: Virginia Governor Alexander Spotswood provides funds for the hire of two light, fast sloops setting a course for Ocracoke Inlet, NC and a confrontation with Blackbeard. blackbeardsqueenannesrevenge.blogspot.com/2018/11/trou...

Videographer Rick Allen says North Carolina illegally copied his work without permission or payment. More than a decade later, he’s still trying to get paid. www.cityviewnc.com/stories/avas...

The court found that both the memorisation in the language models and the reproduction of the song lyrics in the chatbot's outputs constitute infringements of copyright exploitation rights, according to a statement on the ruling. www.reuters.com/world/german...

According to the publication, the communications could demonstrate willful infringement, potentially leading to enhanced damages of up to $150,000 per work, a massive increase from just $750. futurism.com/artificial-i...

There’s a reason that copyright law has never embraced an opt-out system and that’s because opt-out systems do not work. There are many legal, technical, operational, and policy problems and inefficiencies with an opt-out system. copyrightalliance.org/why-opt-out-...

The family of the American artist Norman Rockwell has called upon federal agencies to stop using the artist’s work in content promoting the Trump administration’s anti-immigration policies. rehs.com/eng/2025/11/...

There’s a principle that keeps a free market free: You can’t take what isn’t yours and sell it as your own. Yet, that is precisely what some of the most prominent players in artificial intelligence are doing. dcjournal.com/ais-free-rid...