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January 22, 2015 Prachi Gupta

Brooklyn graffiti artist Craig Anthony Miller, aka CAM, has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against luxury homebuilder Toll Brothers, The New York Daily News reports. Miller claims that the developers used his “Elephant Mural” without permission in a series of DUMBO condo ads they ran in 2012. The 90-foot mural once appeared on Water Street, […]

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December 9, 2014 Rhett Jones

TorrentFreak (TF) is reporting that The Pirate Bay, the world’s largest torrent network, has been raided by Swedish authorities. The torrent news site began looking into the situation this morning when users noticed the site was down for the first time in months. At first it was believed to be a technical glitch, but TF says […]

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July 30, 2014 Sophie Weiner

Port Authority recently sent a cease and desist letter to Manhattan retail store Fishs Eddy over their use of the New York City skyline and tunnels on dishware. The store has been selling these dishes for 13 years, but Port Authority is very concerned about them co-opting what they consider their property. The Wire quoted the cease and […]

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July 9, 2014 Sophie Weiner

A New York’s City councilman has drafted a bill to create a licensing system and background checks for the people who wander Times Square in costumes posing with tourists, to the dismay of brands like Viacom and Sanrio reports the Wall Street Journal. There are currently over 70 mascots — many of them immigrants — […]

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June 6, 2014 Marina Galperina

On your left is a work of by renowned artist Christopher Wool, who had a show at the Guggenheim earlier this year. On your right is a new shirt from Joe Fresh, “a fashion brand and retail chain created by designer Joe Mimran for Canadian food distributor Loblaw Companies Limited.” Art F City points out that […]

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April 25, 2014 Andy Cush

For now, the collected writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels are available for free download on the Marxist Internet Archive, a distribution method that’s decidedly in keeping with the two giants of socialism’s ideas. However, Lawrence & Wishart, a UK-based radical publishing house, is claiming copyright infringement and ordering that the works be taken […]

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March 20, 2014 Marina Galperina

What just happened? Well, artist Richard Prince appropriated the photographs of Jamaican Rastafarians by Patrick Cariou to make million-dollar-selling “Canal Zone” series of works; it’s been a legal, copyright infringement vs. fair use mess for five years. In 2011, the federal court ruled against Prince. In 2013, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled […]

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March 18, 2014 Andy Cush

The saga of Beastie Boys versus GoldieBlox appears to be winding to a close, as the two parties have reached a settlement in a lawsuit sparked by a GoldieBlox YouTube commercial that went viral late last year. GoldieBlox, which sells toys designed to “inspire the future generation of female engineers,” used a reworking of the […]

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March 13, 2014 Andy Cush

On December 6, 2013, the day after Nelson Mandela died, the British conservative activist Jeff Vinall posted the following Facebook status update. “Another terrorist has died,” it reads. “Let us look to making sure our future is safe from similar situations and similar people.” When the UK-based liberal-leaning website Political Scrapbook posted a story about it, […]

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March 6, 2014 Andy Cush

Getty Images, the world’s largest photography service, is now making its photos free to use. Previously, Getty required customers pay a fee to license their works, but now, you’ll be able to embed them wherever you want. Considering the company’s library — 35 million photos, dating back at least a century — this is a […]

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