Mass web-scraping for AI training, authorship of AI-generated works, and the scope of fair use in data-hungry systems are reshaping what “copyright risk” even means for a business. Companies that treat copyright as a mere box-checking exercise, or that assume long-standing internal practices are low-risk, increasingly find themselves out of step with how courts and regulators are thinking about AI-driven uses of content.
The legal landscape around AI and copyright remains unsettled. Forward-looking businesses will not wait for definitive case law on every issue. Instead, they will treat AI as a catalyst to modernize copyright governance: tightening practices around online content, revisiting license strategies, and building internal literacy about how copyright really works in an AI-saturated environment.
The annals of copyright decisions could provide a reasonably representative catalog of what our culture has been up to over the past 200 years. A Feb. 3 decision from the Southern District of New York is a case in point. It involves a sex-trafficking conspiracy, Tweets attacking a troubled crypto firm, and a claimed transfer of copyright ownership through a restitution order in a criminal case, all over an undercurrent of competing First Amendment and victim-privacy concerns.
The Court held that intent is required and that mere awareness of infringement does not establish secondary liability.
The Court held that intent is required and that mere awareness of infringement does not establish secondary liability.
On Dec. 1, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Cox Communications Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment. The case turned on whether Internet Service Providers could be “contributorily liable for copyright infringement, when the provider knew that specific subscribers were using its service to flagrantly infringe and continued to supply those repeat infringers with service.”
Key insights from a panel discussion during this year’s South by Southwest conference in Austin, where speakers weighed the impact of a landmark music industry verdict and what comes next for a sector awash with artificial intelligence.
Adobe was hit with a class action lawsuit accusing the software company of illegally copying hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books, including titles scraped from pirate “shadow libraries,” in what the suit calls large scale, willful copyright infringement.
Artwork created entirely by artificial intelligence without any human involvement does not qualify for copyright protection, lawyers for the U.S. Copyright Office told the U.S. Supreme Court in a filing in in late January.
Two federal courts recently issued rulings on notable issues impacting whether and how artists can terminate prior assignments of copyrights in their works.
