3 Count: Zipper Merge

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1: US Authors’ Copyright Lawsuits Against OpenAI and Microsoft Combined in New York With Newspaper Actions

First off today, Ella Creamer at The Guardian reports that twelve lawsuits filed against OpenAI and Microsoft have been consolidated into one New York lawsuit.

The US Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation ordered the move on Thursday. It determined that the California-filed cases were similar enough to the New York Times’ ongoing litigation in New York to warrant moving them. All the lawsuits involved target the companies for allegedly infringing copyright-protected works to train AI systems.

Individual authors, including Sarah Silverman and Michael Chabon, filed the now-consolidated cases. The authors largely opposed consolidation, saying that the cases were too different. However, the panel ultimately ruled that the cases hinge on the same legal questions.

2: French Court Orders Cloudflare to ‘Dynamically’ Block MotoGP Streaming Piracy

Next up today, Ernesto Van der Sar at Torrentfreak writes that a French court has ordered Cloudflare to block pirate sites illegally streaming MotoGP events and must update their block as new sites come online.

Canal+, the rightsholders to MotoGP events, obtained the order. The order applies to Cloudflares’ content delivery network service and all its other services, including DNS.

Cloudflare attempted to argue that it did not transmit any pirated content and was a mere middleman. However, the court dismissed that argument, saying that the company was integrated into the pirate streams and has an obligation to block infringing sites.

3: A Banana Taped to a Wall? This Artist Says He Did It First. The Supreme Court Ignored Him

Finally today, Maureen Groppe at USA Today reports that the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has declined to hear an appeal by artist Joe Morford over a banana taped to a wall.

Morford filed the lawsuit against artist Maurizio Cattelan. In 2019 Cattelan debuted his latest piece, Comedian. The work featured a banana affixed to a wall using duct tape. Morford claimed that this was infringement of a 2001 work that he created entitled Banana and Orange.

However, the courts ruled against Morford, ruling that the similarities between the works could not be protected by copyright and that Cattelan’s work was an independent creation. After losing both at the district and appeals court levels, Morfot attempted to appeal to SCOTUS. However, they have declined to take the case, allowing the lower courts’ decisions to stand.

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