Dori Ann Hanswirth

On June 13, 2023, the New York Court of Appeals decided two appeals in the sprawling, almost decade-long defamation case by music producer Lukasz Gottwald (Dr. Luke) against pop music star Kesha Rose Sebert (Kesha). First, the New York high court held that the remedies available under New York's amended anti-SLAPP statute apply to cases that were pending on and continued after the amendments' November 10, 2020 effective date.

On March 21, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a decision in McGucken v. Newsweek LLC about whether Newsweek infringed a photographer's copyright by embedding his Instagram photo in an online news article.

Highlights On March 21, Judge Failla of the Southern District of New York concluded that "embedding" Instagram content qualifies as infringement of a copyright owner's right to control the "display" of their works, rejecting the Ninth Circuit's server test. The court decided that Instagram's ambiguous "Terms of Use" in effect at the time did not provide a clear license for users to embed content uploaded by another user; updated terms may make this defense even less tenable for future litigants.