Lose the Legalese!

Can You Get Around the No Copyright Rule for AI-Generated Images?

By jverner | May 21, 2023May 21, 2023 by jverner

Manually Change the Images a bit! You might have heard of the comic book Zarya of the Dawn. Kristina Kashtanova wrote this comic book. She arranged the images in it. She used Midjourney to generate the images. The Copyright Office granted copyright protection to the text and to the way Kashtanova arranged the images. But it denied copyright protection to the AI-generated images themselves because a human being didn’t make them. The Copyright Laws &…

FTC Non-Competes

The FTC’s Proposed Rule to Ban Non-Competes is a Stunning Overreach

By jverner | May 10, 2023May 10, 2023 by jverner

The Proposed Rule Would Supersede State Law The mission of the FTC (“Federal Trade Commission”) is “protecting workers and competition by preventing anticompetitive, deceptive, and unfair business practices.” This left-leaning libertarian thinks the FTC does a lot of good, but this time the agency has overstepped its bounds. The FTC has issued a proposed rule that would ban non-competition agreements. The ban would supersede the various state laws that allow non-competes. Does Your Company Need…

Insider Trading NFTs

Prosecutors Used Mail Fraud and Money Laundering Laws to Convict an Insider Who Traded NFTs

By jverner | May 5, 2023May 5, 2023 by jverner

Facing up to 40 Years in Prison for About $57,000 from Insider Trading You might have read recently that a New York jury convicted Nathaniel Chastain of insider trading. Chastain worked as a product manager for OpenSea, the largest online NFT marketplace. Chastain’s duties included selecting NFTs to be featured on OpenSea’s homepage. The identify of the NFTs to be featured was confidential information. Chastain knew that the value of the featured NFTs typically increased by…