We Still Don’t Know the Second Circuit’s Position on Embedding and Copyright Infringement–Richardson v. Townsquare

This case involves two videos: a video of basketball legend Michael Jordan breaking up a fight, and a video interview with rapper Melle Mel. Videographer Delray Richardson owned the copyrights to both videos. Townsquare operates XXL, an online hip-hop news publication. A Twitter account, DailyLoud, posted the Jordan video to X. XXL embedded it in a story about the video. The Art of Dialogue posted the Melle Mel video to YouTube, and XXL embedded that in a story about the interview. XXL also used screengrabs from the videos in its news coverage of the associated stories. Richardson challenged both the embedding and the screengrabs. My prior blog post on this case. Embed/in bed The central question in the case is whether embedding is infringing. We don’t get an answer to that question. XXL chose to defend the case on other grounds at the district court, so it’s not at issue in the appeal. As a result, the panel assumes “for the purposes of this appeal, that embedding constitutes…