Welcome back to my new column, which is still untitled. (Please keep the name suggestions pouring in to me at [email protected].) This week, I’m focusing on how Biden’s pick for the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, could have an impact on the entertainment industry. And I’m also interested in how some underappreciated activity in the California state legislature may have powerful activity in film and television. But, in the meantime, here’s some stuff on my docket…

• The U.S. Copyright Office has ruled that an artwork entitled A Recent Entrance to Paradise, generated by algorithm, is ineligible for copyright registration for two reasons. First, human authorship is required. And second, artificial intelligence lacks legal personhood and thus can’t enter into binding work-for-hire contracts with human overlords. Read the decision here. It’ll be interesting to watch whether this determination is challenged in court.
  
  

• The Institute of Free Speech is about to publish a report card for all 50 states on their anti-SLAPP laws, and I’ve gotten an advance look. For those unfamiliar, these statutes are designed to stop litigious people from using courts to bully someone else’s First Amendment rights. California gets an A+ from the think tank for the way the state allows judges to review a case’s merits quickly and shift legal fees to the winner. Nineteen states with no anti-SLAPP law get F’s. The states making strides to protect free speech by recently enacting new procedures to...

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