Video piracy costs rights-holders and the media industry $75 billion annually in lost revenues, so steps like the shuttering of massive sports piracy operation Streameast are welcome, Kearney media lawyer Christophe Firth wrote last week. "But it is a game of whack-a-mole and there is every risk of similar piracy hubs quickly filling the gap left by Streameast’s closure."

When it comes to tech competition between the U.S. and China, "America is not genuinely competing now, and never has," American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Derek Scissors wrote Wednesday. China has repeatedly seen the state identify important technology and then command development of it while providing various kinds of support, he said. Identifying those technologies is getting harder as China moves closer to the technology frontier, but state resources for support have grown enormously, Scissors added. Meanwhile, the U.S. "has no technology strategy at all," and U.S. companies and individuals are competing with China for profit, not national interest, with revenues and share prices often tied to helping China. Decades of the U.S. government doing little to punish Chinese firms for intellectual property theft and infringement make it "impossible to take American policy seriously," Scissors said. "While Beijing will always make foreign technology acquisition a cornerstone of its competition strategy, we have made its job easy."

Cox Communications didn't do anything affirmative to further online piracy by its broadband subscribers, and holding it liable for contributory copyright infringement flouts decades of U.S. Supreme Court case law, the cable ISP told SCOTUS on Friday. In a docket 24-171 petitioners' brief, Cox said the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals "defies common law and common sense" in its finding that ISPs are liable when they continue offering service after getting notifications accusing an unknown user of infringing copyright. Cox is challenging the 4th Circuit upholding a lower court's copyright infringement finding against Cox for piracy by some of its internet subscribers (see 2408160034).

Of the more than 50 AI copyright infringement lawsuits filed in recent years, close to 30 remain active due to consolidations and settlements, the Copyright Alliance's Kevin Madigan wrote last week. Authors of literary works suing large language model developers represent a sizable portion of those, while YouTube copyright owners, visual artists and news publishers also have brought cases, said Madigan, the group's senior vice president of policy and government affairs. He said most cases involve literary works, but there have been cases brought involving musical compositions, sound recordings, videos, photos and computer code as well. The Disney and Universal litigation against AI platform Midjourney (see 2506110043) is one of only a few cases involving claims against an image generator for infringing output, he noted, "and it will be one to watch given the very strong evidence presented and the fair use defense Midjourney has raised."

A federal judge on Friday rejected Warner Bros. Discovery's attempt to have a trademark infringement suit against its HGTV network tossed. Judge Richard Andrews of the U.S. District Court for Delaware denied the company's motion for summary judgment (docket 1:22-cv-01583). He also denied a summary judgment motion by plaintiff HomeVestors of America seeking dismissal of Warner Bros.' First Amendment defense and its defense under the legal Rogers test, which weighs trademark rights versus First Amendment protections. HomeVestors, a home-buying company, sued Warner Bros. over HGTV's Ugliest House in America show, claiming it violated HomeVestors' trademarks for "We Buy Ugly Houses," "the Ugliest House of the Year" and "Ugly House?" The trial is set to begin Aug. 25.

The studios suing Midjourney "cannot have it both ways," trying to profit from the use of Midjourney's AI tools while accusing it of wrongdoing, the company told a federal court last week. Disney and Universal are suing Midjourney for direct and secondary copyright infringement over use of the generative AI service to create unauthorized copies of the studios' content (see 2506110043). In an answer to the complaint alleging direct and secondary copyright infringement, Midjourney said training a generative AI model by lifting statistical information embedded in copyrighted works "is a quintessentially transformative fair use." Its AI platform is for user expression, and there's no way it can know if a particular image is infringing, short of receiving notice from a copyright owner and information about how the image is being used. There are numerous non-infringing grounds for creating images that use characters claimed by the studios, such as noncommercial fan art and criticism, Midjourney said. "Plaintiffs seek to stifle them all."

A federal court has approved a joint motion by Altice USA and the music labels suing it that the case be stayed pending the U.S. Supreme Court's decision regarding similar litigation against Cox Communications (see 2507140027). The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas ordered the stay Tuesday (docket 2:23-cv-00576). Both cases involve contributory liability for music piracy by the ISPs' broadband subscribers.

Altice USA and a set of music labels suing it are jointly asking a federal court to pause the looming trial pending a U.S. Supreme Court decision on music label litigation against Cox Communications. In a joint motion filed Friday (docket 2:23-cv-00576) with the U.S. District Court for Eastern Texas, the labels and Altice said SCOTUS' Cox decision "will address and could alter the legal standards for key issues" in their case. Those include contributory infringement for an ISP and willful infringement, they said.

The U.S. District Court for Western Washington on Tuesday granted Dish Network's request for a default judgment against data center operator Virtual Systems (docket 2:24-cv-01683). Dish sued Virtual Systems in 2024, alleging that it supported multiple video pirate streaming sites (see 2507010001).

Dish Network is asking a federal court for a default decision against a data center operator that allegedly supports multiple video pirate streaming sites. Dish told the U.S. District Court for Western Washington on Monday (docket 2:24-cv-01683) that Virtual Systems has failed to plead or otherwise defend itself in litigation filed in October (see 2410180030).