New Lawsuit Challenges Illegal Renaming of the Kennedy Center; Washington Litigation Group, December 22, 2025

 Washington Litigation Group; New Lawsuit Challenges Illegal Renaming of the Kennedy Center

"Congresswoman Joyce Beatty today sued President Trump and others to stop the unlawful renaming of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The lawsuit was brought on behalf of the Congresswoman in her capacity as an ex officio trustee of the Kennedy Center by the Washington Litigation Group and Democracy Defenders Action. Congresswoman Beatty participated in the recent Board meeting and alleges she was prevented from speaking when she attempted to object to the renaming. 

“Only Congress has the authority to rename the Kennedy Center. President Trump and his cronies must not be allowed to trample federal law and bypass Congress to feed his ego,” said Congresswoman Beatty. “This entire process has been a complete disgrace to this cherished institution and the people it serves. These unlawful actions must be blocked before any further damage is done.”

Shortly after President Kennedy’s assassination, Congress designated the Kennedy Center as the sole national memorial within the nation’s capital to the late President. The lawsuit argues that because Congress named the center by statute, changing the Kennedy Center’s name requires an act of Congress. 

The suit follows a December 18, 2025 announcement that the Board had voted to rebrand the Kennedy Center with President Trump’s name, and the rapid installation of new exterior signage and related digital branding changes the next day. The lawsuit contends that the Board’s action is legally void and damages the institution’s public mission by turning a national memorial into a political vanity project.

“The President and his sycophants have no lawful authority to rename the Kennedy Center,” said Nathaniel Zelinsky, Senior Counsel at Washington Litigation Group and Amb. Norman Eisen (ret.), founder of Democracy Defenders Action. “Congress named the Kennedy Center as a national memorial to President Kennedy, and only Congress can change that. We are proud to represent Congresswoman Beatty as she defends the integrity of this institution and the separation of powers.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, asks the court to declare the Board’s renaming vote unlawful and without legal effect, order removal of the physical and digital signage and branding changes, restore the Kennedy Center’s lawful name, and prevent further attempts to rename it without congressional authorization.

WLG’s lead lawyers on the case are Senior Counsels Nathaniel Zelinsky and Kyle Freeny.  Also on the complaint from WLG are:  Thomas C. Green, John Aldock, Samantha P. Bateman, Elizabeth D. Collery, Mary L. Dohrmann, James I. Pearce, Barry Wm Levine.  WLG is litigating the case alongside Democracy Defenders Action."

The Benign Zombies of Pluribus; The Hastings Center for Bioethics, December 22, 2025

 Jonathan D. Moreno, The Hastings Center for Bioethics; The Benign Zombies of Pluribus

"Whatever disagreements neuroethicists have, they all presuppose the annoying multiplicity of brains that somehow generate minds. Not so in Vince Galligan’s new streaming series Pluribus.

A coded message from deep space is the trigger for turning (nearly) all human beings into segments of a “hive mind,” a global super colony that the sociobiologist E.O. Wilson would have recognized from his work on ants. And wouldn’t you know it, those nerdy scientists hanging on every radio impulse from the universe in search of intelligent life provide the gateway to a radical loss of individuality. Thus the SETI geeks enter a long tradition of fictional scientists who unleash forces that quickly run out of control.

The results are mixed: No war, no violence, no racism or sexism.  Also, no personal uniqueness. Is it worth it?...

Like all such speculations Pluribus raises countless questions. How did this actually happen and why, if one member of the hive gets drunk, the whole hive doesn’t?"

Press arrests used to silence protest coverage in 2025; U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, December 15, 2025

Stephanie Sugars from Freedom of the Press Foundation, U.S. Press Freedom Tracker; Press arrests used to silence protest coverage in 2025

"While covering anything from protests to government meetings, journalists in 2025 were pulled from news scenes, placed in cuffs and held in custody from minutes to days — long enough for deadlines to pass and breaking news to go cold.

As of Dec. 15, the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker has documented at least 32 instances in which journalists were detained or charged just for doing their jobs. While that count is lower than the 50 documented last year, each one is a warning flare that something fundamental is shifting in how authorities police information and those who gather it. Most were released without charges or had them quickly dropped, but the impact extends far beyond the time spent in custody...

The LA Press Club’s Rose told the Tracker that, once a member of the press is placed in handcuffs, they can’t operate a camera, take notes or observe unfolding events.

“But I know one reporter who mastered a new skill they don’t teach in journalism school,” he added. “While his hands are behind him in zip ties, he can pull out his phone and still type out emergency messages asking for help. I’ve been on the receiving end of quite a few of those.

“This should not be what’s needed to cover protests,” said Rose, “but it’s where we are in 2025.”"

‘I ultimately had to comply’: ‘60 Minutes’ EP faces fallout after Bari Weiss shelves story; The Washington Post, December 22, 2025

 

Liam Scott

 and 

Scott Nover

, The Washington Post; ‘I ultimately had to comply’: ‘60 Minutes’ EP faces fallout after Bari Weiss shelves story

"Kelly McBride, senior vice president at the Poynter Institute, said requiring on-camera interviews with administration officials could be abused to manipulate coverage.

“It would give them the power to pick and choose which stories they want to go out,” McBride said. “It would allow them to literally craft the narrative themselves.”

It’s also uncommon for such a deeply reported segment to be pulled at the last minute, according to McBride. “This is a really high stakes story, and if she [Weiss] wanted to be involved in the process of green lighting or red lighting, that should not happen the day before the story is ready to run,” McBride said."

Yanked "60 Minutes" episode aired in Canada; Axios, December 22, 2025

 Sara Fischer , Axios; Yanked "60 Minutes" episode aired in Canada

[Kip Currier: CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss "knows her assignment": run editorial interference for oligarch Paramount Skydance tech baron bosses Larry and David Ellison (who own CBS) and the Trump 2.0 administration.

In one of the first major tests of Weiss's censorial assignment, she has both succeeded and failed: (1) blocking the airing of a damning 60 Minutes segment set to hear on December 21, 2025 on the human rights and due process violations of the Trump 2.0 administration in deporting detainees to El Salvador's notorious CECOT prison gulag, and (2) unsuccessfully stopping the blocked video from leaking to Canada and the San Francisco-based Internet Archive.]

[Excerpt]

"The "60 Minutes" segment pulled from air by CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss did not include new comments from Trump administration officials, according to a copy of the segment viewed by Axios.

Why it matters: The segment, anchored by correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, caused uproar internally over whether it was pulled for political reasons. 

• The package was distributed via an app owned by Global Television which airs "60 Minutes" in Canada.

Zoom in: The segment included interviews with two people who were imprisoned at CECOT, an executive from the nonprofit Human Rights Watch and the director of UC Berkeley's Human Rights Center Investigations Lab.

• One college student, who was detained by U.S. customs before getting deported to CECOT, describes being tortured upon arrival. 
• 
  
• Another man told Alfonsi that he and others were taken to "a little room where there's no light, no ventilation, nothing."
• 
  
• "It's a cell for punishment where you can't see your hand in front of your face. After they locked us in, they came to beat us every half hour, and they pounded on the door with their sticks to traumatize us while we were in there."
• 
  
• "60 Minutes" also said it reviewed available ICE data to confirm Human Rights Watch's findings that suggested only eight deported men had been sentenced for violent or potentially violent crimes.
• 
  

The other side: The segment ends with Alfonsi saying the Department of Homeland Security "declined our request for an interview and referred all questions about CECOT to El Salvador. The government there did not respond to our request."

• The segment included previous comments made by President Trump, who said El Salvador's prison system has "very strong facilities, and they don't play games.""

CBS Frantically Tries to Stop People From Seeing Censored ‘60 Minutes’; The Daily Beast, December 23, 2025

 William Vaillancourt  , The Daily Beast; CBS Frantically Tries to Stop People From Seeing Censored ‘60 Minutes’

"The 60 Minutes story that CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss abruptly pulled from the air on Sunday has been leaked—and the network is responding with copyright takedowns.

Canadian broadcaster Global TV aired the segment, which deals with Venezuelan migrants to the U.S. whom the Trump administration deported to CECOT, the notorious prison in El Salvador. Videos of the segment—in some instances, people recording their television screens—began circulating on Monday. But many didn’t last.

Paramount Skydance, CBS News’ parent company, began issuing a flurry of copyright notices on X, YouTube, and other platforms.

But the video was ultimately saved in the Internet Archive, among other places. 

In it, a Venezuelan college student who sought asylum in the U.S.—and says he has no criminal record—describes what happened to him at CECOT.

“There was blood everywhere, screams, people crying, people who couldn’t take it and were urinating and vomiting on themselves,” Luis Munoz Pinto said. “Four guards grabbed me, and they beat me until I bled until the point of agony. They knocked our faces against the wall. That was when they broke one of my teeth.”"

CBS Boss’s ‘60 Minutes’ Intervention Backfires as Episode Leaks; The Daily Beast, December 23, 2025

 

William Vaillancourt , The Daily Beast ; CBS Boss’s ‘60 Minutes’ Intervention Backfires as Episode Leaks

"The 60 Minutes segment that CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss pulled from airing on Sunday has leaked.

The segment covers the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador, where the Trump administration sent some Venezuelan migrants. Canada’s Global TV aired the segment, according to CNN media reporter Brian Stelter, and it was later published elsewhere."

Natasha Lyonne says AI has an ethics problem because right now it’s ‘super kosher copacetic to rob freely under the auspices of acceleration’; Fortune, December 20, 2025

 Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez , Fortune; Natasha Lyonne says AI has an ethics problem because right now it’s ‘super kosher copacetic to rob freely under the auspices of acceleration’

"Asteria partnered with Moonvalley AI, which makes AI tools for filmmakers, to create Marey, named after cinematographer Étienne-Jules Marey. The tool helps generate AI video that can be used for movies and TV, but only draws on open-license content or material it has explicit permission to use. 

Being careful about the inputs for Asteria’s AI video generation is important, Lyonne said at the Fortune Brainstorm AI conference in San Francisco last week. As AI use increases, both tech and Hollywood need to respect the work of the cast, as well as the crew and the writers behind the scenes. 

“I don’t think it’s super kosher copacetic to just kind of rob freely under the auspices of acceleration or China,” she said. 

While she hasn’t yet used AI to help make a TV show or movie, Lyonne said Asteria has used it in other small ways to develop renderings and other details.

“It’s a pretty revolutionary act that we actually do have that model and that’s you know the basis for everything that we work on,” said Lyonne.

Marey is available to the public for a credits-based subscription starting at $14.99 per month."

OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI Hit With Copyright Suit from Writers; Bloomberg Law, December 22, 2025

 Annelise Levy, Bloomberg Law; OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI Hit With Copyright Suit from Writers

"Writers including Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Carreyrou filed a copyright lawsuit accusing six AI giants of using pirated copies of their books to train large language models.

The complaint, filed Monday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, claims Anthropic PBC, Google LLC, OpenAI Inc., Meta Platforms Inc., xAI Corp., and Perplexity AI Inc. committed a “deliberate act of theft.”

It is the first copyright lawsuit against xAI over its training process, and the first suit brought by authors against Perplexity...

Carreyrou is among the authors who opted out of a $1.5 billion class-action settlement with Anthropic."

Launch, Train, Settle: How Suno And Udio’s Licensing Deals Made Copyright Infringement Profitable; Forbes, December 18, 2025

Virginie Berger, Forbes; Launch, Train, Settle: How Suno And Udio’s Licensing Deals Made Copyright Infringement Profitable

"The Precedent That Pays

Perhaps most concerning is what these partial settlements teach other AI companies: copyright infringement can be a viable business strategy, as long as you only have to answer to those with the resources to sue.

The calculus is straightforward. Build your product using copyrighted material without permission. Grow quickly while competitors who might try to license properly struggle with costs and complexity.

If you get big enough, those with sufficient resources will eventually sue. At that point, negotiate from strength because your technology is already deployed, your users are already dependent on it, and dismantling what you've built would be costly.

The worst case isn't court-ordered damages or shutdown anymore but will be a licensing deal where you finally pay something. But far less than you would have paid to license properly from the start, and only to the major players who could force you to the table. And you keep operating with legitimacy.

Both Suno and Udio can now market themselves as "responsibly licensed" platforms, pointing to their deals with major labels as proof of legitimacy. The narrative shifts from "they stole content to build this" to "they're innovative partners in the future of music.""

Notre Dame receives $50 million grant from Lilly Endowment for the DELTA Network, a faith-based approach to AI ethics; Notre Dame News, December 19, 2025

Carrie Gates and Laura Moran Walton, Notre Dame News ; Notre Dame receives $50 million grant from Lilly Endowment for the DELTA Network, a faith-based approach to AI ethics

"The University of Notre Dame has been awarded a $50.8 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. to support the DELTA Network: Faith-Based Ethical Formation for a World of Powerful AI. Led by the Notre Dame Institute for Ethics and the Common Good(ECG), this grant — the largest awarded to Notre Dame by a private foundation in the University’s history — will fund the further development of a shared, faith-based ethical framework that scholars, religious leaders, tech leaders, teachers, journalists, young people and the broader public can draw upon to discern appropriate uses of artificial intelligence, or AI.

The grant will also support the establishment of a robust, interconnected network that will provide practical resources to help navigate challenges posed by rapidly developing AI. Based on principles and values from Christian traditions, the framework is designed to be accessible to people of all faith perspectives.

“We are deeply grateful to Lilly Endowment for its generous support of this critically important initiative,” said University President Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C. “Pope Leo XIV calls for us all to work to ensure that AI is ‘intelligent, relational and guided by love,’ reflecting the design of God the Creator. As a Catholic university that seeks to promote human flourishing, Notre Dame is well-positioned to build bridges between religious leaders and educators, and those creating and using new technologies, so that they might together explore the moral and ethical questions associated with AI.”

Australian culture, resources and democracy for $4,300 a year? Thanks for the offer, tech bros, but no thanks; The Guardian, December 15, 2025

Peter Lewis , The Guardian; Australian culture, resources and democracy for $4,300 a year? Thanks for the offer, tech bros, but no thanks

"According to the Tech Council, AI will deliver $115bn in annual productivity (or about $4,300 per person), rubbery figures generated by industry-commissioned research based on estimates on hours saved with no regard for jobs lost, the distribution of the promised dividend benefit or how the profits will flow.

In return for this ill-defined bounty, Farquhar says our government will need to allow the tech industry to do three things: build a data and text mining exemption to copyright law, rapidly scale data centre infrastructure and allow foreign companies to use these centres without regard for local laws. This is a proposition that demands closer scrutiny.

The use of copyrighted content to train AI has been a burning issue since 2023 when a massive data dredge saw more than 190,000 authors (including me) have our works plundered without our consent to train AI. Musicians and artists too have had their work scraped and repurposed.

This theft has been critical in training the large language models to portray something approaching empathy. It has also allowed paid users to take this stolen content and ape creators, devaluing and diminishing their work in the process. Nick Cave has described this as “replication as travesty”, noting “songs arise out of suffering … data doesn’t suffer. ChatGPT has no inner being, it has been nowhere, it has endured nothing.”

The sense of grievance among creators over the erasure of culture is wide and deep. A wave of creators from Peter Garrett to Tina Arena, Anna Funderand Trent Dalton have determined this is the moment to take a stand.

It is not just the performers; journalists, academics, voiceover and visual artists are all being replaced by shittier but cheaper automated products built on the theft of their labour, undermining the integrity of their work and will ultimately take their jobs.

Like fossil fuels, what is being extracted and consumed is the sum of our accumulated history. It goes from metaphor to literal when it comes to the second plank of Farquhar’s pitch: massive spending on industrial infrastructure to accommodate AI.

This imperative to power AI is the justification used by Donald Trump to recharge the mining of fossil fuels, while the industry is beating the “modular nuclear” drum for a cleaner AI revolution. Meanwhile, the OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, is reassuring us that we don’t need to stress because AI will solve climate change anyway!

The third and final element of Farquhar’s pitch is probably its most revealing. If Australia wants to build this AI nirvana, foreign nations should be given diplomatic immunity for the data centres built and operated here. This quaint notion of the “data embassy” overriding national sovereignty reinforces a growing sense that the tech sector is moving beyond the idea of the nation state governing corporations to that of a modern imperial power.

That’s the premise of Karen Hao’s book The Empire of AI, which chronicles the rise of OpenAI and the choices it made to trade off safety and the public good in pursuit of scale and profit."

Proposal to allow use of Australian copyrighted material to train AI abandoned after backlash; The Guardian, December 19, 2025

Patrick Commins , The Guardian; Proposal to allow use of Australian copyrighted material to train AI abandoned after backlash

"The Productivity Commission has abandoned a proposal to allow tech companies to mine copyrighted material to train artificial intelligence models, after a fierce backlash from the creative industries.

Instead, the government’s top economic advisory body recommended the government wait three years before deciding whether to establish an independent review of Australian copyright settings and the impact of the disruptive new technology...

In its interim report on the digital economy, the commission floated the idea of granting a “fair dealing” exemption to copyright rules that would allow AI companies to mine data and text to develop their large language models...

The furious response from creative industries to the commission’s idea included music industry bodies saying it would “legitimise digital piracy under guise of productivity”."

Fair Use is a Right. Ignoring It Has Consequences.; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), December 18, 2025

MITCH STOLTZ , Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); Fair Use is a Right. Ignoring It Has Consequences.

"Fair use is not just an excuse to copy—it’s a pillar of online speech protection, and disregarding it in order to lash out at a critic should have serious consequences. That’s what we told a federal court in Channel 781 News v. Waltham Community Access Corporation, our case fighting copyright abuse on behalf of citizen journalists."

January 1, 2026 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1930 are open to all, as are sound recordings from 1925!; Center for the Study of the Public Domain, December 2025

Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle, Center for the Study of the Public Domain; January 1, 2026 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1930 are open to all, as are sound recordings from 1925!

"CC BY 4.0

Please note that this site is only about US law; the copyright terms in other countries are different.[2]

On January 1, 2026, thousands of copyrighted works from 1930 enter the US public domain, along with sound recordings from 1925. They will be free for all to copy, share, and build upon.[3] The literary highlights range from William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying to Agatha Christie’s The Murder at the Vicarage and the first four Nancy Drew novels. From cartoons and comic strips, the characters Betty Boop, Pluto (originally named Rover), and Blondie and Dagwood made their first appearances. Films from the year featured Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, the Marx Brothers, and John Wayne in his first leading role. Among the public domain compositions are I Got Rhythm, Georgia on My Mind, and Dream a Little Dream of Me. We are also celebrating paintings from Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee. Below you can find lists of some of the most notable books, characters, comics, and cartoons, films, songs, sound recordings, and art entering the public domain.[4] After each of them, we have provided an analysis of their significance. At the end of the article, we explain:

Why all of this matters
How do copyright and trademark law apply to characters?
What is the impact of the long copyright term?
What are the basic rules for determining whether something is public domain?
Conclusion"

, IGN; Copyright Takedowns Issued After What Looks to Be a Leaked Avengers: Doomsday Trailer Posted Online, December 16, 2025

TOM PHILLIPS, IGN; Copyright Takedowns Issued After What Looks to Be a Leaked Avengers: Doomsday Trailer Posted Online

 "Copyright takedowns are targeting what appears to be a leaked version of Marvel's first Avengers: Doomsday trailer, which is now being snapped out of existence across social media.

Uploads of the video file began yesterday, and were initially easy to find across social media. But today, copyright notices have replaced numerous instances of the file on X and reddit, and the original video is nowhere to be seen YouTube."

The Architects of AI Are TIME’s 2025 Person of the Year; Time, December 11, 2025

Charlie Campbell.  Andrew R. Chow and Billy Perrigo , Time; The Architects of AI Are TIME’s 2025 Person of the Year

"For decades, humankind steeled itself for the rise of thinking machines. As we marveled at their ability to beat chess champions and predict protein structures, we also recoiled from their inherent uncanniness, not to mention the threats to our sense of humanity. Leaders striving to develop the technology, including Sam Altman and Elon Musk, warned that the pursuit of its powers could create unforeseen catastrophe.

This year, the debate about how to wield AI responsibly gave way to a sprint to deploy it as fast as possible. “Every industry needs it, every company uses it, and every nation needs to build it,” Huang tells TIME in a 75-minute interview in November, two days after announcing that Nvidia, the world’s first $5 trillion company, had once again smashed Wall Street’s earnings expectations. “This is the single most impactful technology of our time.” OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which at launch was the fastest-growing consumer app of all time, has surpassed 800 million weekly users. AI wrote millions of lines of code, aided lab scientists, generated viral songs, and spurred companies to re-examine their strategies or risk obsolescence. (OpenAI and TIME have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI to access TIME’s archives.)...

This is the story of how AI changed our world in 2025, in new and exciting and sometimes frightening ways. It is the story of how Huang and other tech titans grabbed the wheel of history, developing technology and making decisions that are reshaping the information landscape, the climate, and our livelihoods. Racing both beside and against each other, they placed multibillion-dollar bets on one of the biggest physical infrastructure projects of all time. They reoriented government policy, altered geopolitical rivalries, and brought robots into homes. AI emerged as arguably the most consequential tool in great-power competition since the advent of nuclear weapons."