3 Count: Google’s Dueling Lawsuits

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1: Google Takes Legal Action Against AI Scammers & Copyright Fraud

First off today, Matt G. Southern at Search Engine Journal reports that Google has filed a pair of lawsuits, one targeting alleged spammers who misled customers by pretending to represent Google and another group that filed a large number of false takedown notices.

The first lawsuit alleges that the defendants used the excitement over generative AI to trick people into “downloading” Bard, Google’s AI chatbot. However, Bard does not require a download and, instead, those people were infected by malware. Google hopes that this lawsuit will open up a new approach for dealing with such malware online.

The second lawsuit targets a group of alleged scammers who filed false copyright notices with Google to eliminate some 100,000 business websites that were not infringing. According to Google, many of the companies involved were forced to close, and many jobs were lost, as well as time wasted on dealing with the false claims.

2: Disney Pulls TV Channels From Vietnam, Govt. “Concerned” Piracy Will Run Riot

Next up today, Andy Maxwell at Torrentfreak writes that. Disney has dropped many of its legal TV channels inside the country of Vietnam, leading to concerns that piracy of Disney content will grow.

In October and November, several Disney-owned channels went dark from Vietnamese pay TV, including National Geographic, Nat Geo Wild and Disney itself. This case after other channels, such as Fox Movies and Fox Sports, similarly went dark.

According to the government, Disney thinks that traditional TV has run its course in the country and, instead, is focusing on streaming/on-demand services. However, Disney+ is not yet available in Vietnam, stoking fears in the government that this could lead to a spike in piracy. The move comes shortly Vietnam announced that it is taking significant steps to reduce piracy in the country.

3: Lynn Goldsmith is Raising Money to Cover Costs of Winning Warhol Copyright Case

Finally today, Jeremy Gray at PetaPixel reports that photographer Lynn Goldsmith has launched a GoFundMe campaign to help pay for her legal bills that she incurred during her lengthy battle with the estate of artist Andy Warhol.

The Warhol estate sued Goldsmith after Goldsmith alleged that Warhol’s creation of multiple paintings of the musician Prince was an infringement of her photograph that they were based on. The estate sued her in a “first strike” in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court, which eventually found in favor of Goldsmith in one of the most important copyright rulings in decades.

However, the victory was extremely costly, with Goldsmith saying, in a recent interview, that she was forced to sell her house to pay the more than $2.5 million she racked up in legal fees. She is seeking $750,000 from the GoFundMe campaign and, as of this writing, has reached just over $70,000.

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