3 Count: House Partied

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1: BET Defeats Copyright Lawsuit Over ‘House Party’ Instagram Live Show

First off today, Blake Brittain at Reuters reports that Black Entertainment Television (BET) has won dismissal of a lawsuit filed against it over its Instagram Live show House Party.

The lawsuit was filed by Walkie Check Productions, who claimed that they came up with the concept for the House Party show and began negotiations with BET in 2015 to bring it to air. However, Those negotiations never culminated and, during the pandemic lockdowns, BET launched an Instagram Live show of the same name.

That prompted Walkie Check Promotions to file the lawsuit, but the case struggled out the gate as the judge quickly tossed all non-copyright claims. The case did move on, but now those copyright claims have been dismissed as well, with the judge saying that, other than the name, the two shows have little in common and the similarities don’t support a copyright claim.

2: H&M Sues Shein For Copyright Infringement

Next up today, Rhonda Richfort at Women’s Wear Daily reports that Swedish retailer Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) has filed a lawsuit in Hong Kong against the “fast fashion” brand Shein.

The lawsuit targets Shein’s parent company, Zoetop Business, as well as others involved in the company. It alleges that many of Shein designs had a “striking resemblance” to products sold by H&M, prompting the lawsuit.

The case comes on the heels of another lawsuit against Shein, which was filed in California by a group of independent artists seeking class action status. Shein had no comment on either case.

3: Publishers Want Billions, Not Millions, Fom AI

Finally today, Ben Smith at Semafor reports that news organization IAC as well as other key news publishers are working to formalize a coalition that they hope will lead the charge against artificial intelligence (AI) systems, including both litigation and pushes for legislative action.

In addition to IAC, the coalition would include, The New York Times, News Corp and Axel Springer among others. The goal, according to the interview with IAC CEO Joey Levin, is to not repeat the same mistakes they did with social media and just give their content away.

According to Levin, AI models “are designed to steal the best of the internet” and have built much of their model on content created and owned by news publishers. He further stated that publishers should collect revenue based on the value they generate, an amount he argues could run into the billions of dollars.

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