The Authorship Line Holds
August 6, 2026
The Supreme Court declined to hear Thaler, cementing the human authorship requirement. Allen v. Perlmutter now tests how much human input is enough. GEMA beat Suno in Munich. The line is holding.
Weekly case reviews, legal developments, and resources for independent creators.
August 6, 2026
The Supreme Court declined to hear Thaler, cementing the human authorship requirement. Allen v. Perlmutter now tests how much human input is enough. GEMA beat Suno in Munich. The line is holding.
July 28, 2026
Google sued a web scraper under the DMCA. A federal judge dismissed most of the case, ruling that URLs and search snippets are not copyrighted works. The ruling exposes a trillion-dollar company trying to criminalize the practice that built its empire.
July 21, 2026
New York passes the first statewide data center moratorium. Monterey Park becomes the first city to vote a permanent ban. The freeze that started in Arizona and Oregon has gone national.
July 23, 2026
Warner took $500M from Suno. UMG signed with Udio. Sony fights on. The major labels cashed out. The independent artists whose songs trained these models have been offered nothing.
July 25, 2026
Concord v. Anthropic upheld DMCA claims. Ross Intelligence lost on fair use. Courts are drawing lines. For independent creators, the DMCA is the most powerful tool available. Here is what works.
July 15, 2026
Hagens Berman joins the independent artists’ class actions against Suno and Udio. DMCA claims upheld. Suno raises $400M while fighting to keep its training data secret. The major labels split three ways.
July 12, 2026
AZ moratorium. IL incentive pause. TX ratepayer directive. OR tax break ban. $130B in projects blocked in Q1. Gallup: 71% opposition. The data center buildout hit a wall, and the wall hit back.
June 28, 2026
33 unpermitted gas turbines in Southaven, Mississippi. The DOJ intervenes — on xAI's side — arguing AI dominance trumps the Clean Air Act. Mississippi files as amicus.
June 15, 2026
Sony's fair-use standoff, the $3 billion Anthropic publishing case, Michael Smith's guilty plea, streaming fraud by the numbers, and the Copyright Office Part 3 report.