Sign in

Matthew Sag

@matthewsag.bsky.social
1.4K followers 346 following 148 posts

Law professor focusing on Copyright and AI, mostly. Most of my work is available at papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAu…

PostsRepliesMedia
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Advice on responsible AI use in student memos and presentations—from my 2026 Emory Law course, where AI is encouraged but students are accountable for accuracy and quality. Note: this guidance is course-specific. matthewsag.com/effective-an...
021
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
New post on AI-assisted scholarship, prompted by McGinnis's "The Scholar's Telescope" and Silbey & Hartzog's "AI Slop". TLDR: if you can't be bothered to *edit* it, why should I bother to read it? matthewsag.com/the-unwritte...
141
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
matthewsag.com/doj-enters-t... So, this just happened. On September 1, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a statement of interest in the sprawling OpenAI copyright litigation, In re OpenAI, Inc., Copyright Infringement Litigation, and mostly got it right.
010
Reposted by Matthew Sag
Quinn Daedal @quinnanya.me · 29/08/2026
Tonight I learned, thanks to @matthewsag.bsky.social textbook on copyright & AI, that the Register of Copyright for the US was also removed in 2025 after Carla Hayden. She sued, and all that is still pending resolution with some bigger stakes in the mix.
On May 8, 2025, the President removed the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden. Days
later the administration removed the Register of Copyrights, Shira Perlmutter, and installed
an acting Register. Perlmutter sued, arguing that only the Librarian may remove the
Register and that the Deputy Attorney General who purported to remove her, Todd
Blanche, was not lawfully serving as acting Librarian. The district court declined to order
her reinstatement, but in September 2025 the D.C. Circuit enjoined the administration from
interfering with her service as Register pending appeal, over the dissent of Judge Walker.
Perlmutter v. Blanche, No. 25-5285 (D.C. Cir. Sept. 10, 2025). In June 2026 the Supreme
Court denied the government’s emergency application to lift that injunction.At the time of writing no court has ruled on the merits. Everything so far is interim relief,
granted on a preliminary assessment of the likelihood of success and expressly described
by the D.C. Circuit as an exceptional remedy. The underlying question, whether the
Register serves at the pleasure of the President or is insulated from removal by the Office’s
placement in the legislative branch, remains open.
The stakes are larger than the fate of one official. Much of the Office’s influence rests on
a claim to institutional expertise and a measure of distance from the political branches.
Courts cite its reports, defer in varying degrees to its registration practices, and treat its
views as informed rather than merely interested. If the Register is removable at will by the
President, that claim is harder to sustain, and the weight that copyright doctrine has quietly
placed on the Office as an expert body becomes a question rather than an assumption.
Readers should watch this litigation less for what it says about the separation of powers
than for what it may say about who gets to speak with authority about copyright.
282
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
I am quite chuffed to be included in the National Law Review and Wickard’s 2026 Top 50 Legal Innovators in Academia. Thanks to the colleagues, students, and collaborators who make this work possible. natlawreview.com/article/2026... #ArtificialIntelligence #LegalEducation #LegalInnovation
natlawreview.com
The 2026 Top 50 Legal Innovators in Academia
The National Law Review and Wickard are proud to announce the Top 50 Legal Innovators in Academia for 2026, a national recognition honoring the educators, administrators, researchers, and academic lea...
010
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
matthewsag.com/ai-policy-pr... I wrote an accessible primer for students embarking on law and AI courses. Fairly short, six modular parts, potentially useful, and I think a bit more balanced than usual.
matthewsag.com
An AI Policy Primer for Students – Matthew Sag
010
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
My new textbook on Copyright Law in the Age of AI is now up on my website as a free pdf. I will move it to a dedicated website soon, but for now matthewsag.com/copyright-la...
matthewsag.com
Copyright Law in the Age of AI – Matthew Sag
67929
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
I love this: talkie-lm.com/introducing-...
talkie-lm.com
Introducing talkie: a 13B vintage language model from 1930
010
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
@edleeprof.bsky.social's AI/ copyright case tracker is awesome! chatgptiseatingtheworld.com/aicopyrightc...
chatgptiseatingtheworld.com
AI Copyright Case Tracker
Visit the post for more.
060
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
5th annual Legal Scholars Roundtable on Artificial Intelligence is over. A fun time was had by all
140
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
The 5th Annual Legal Scholars Roundtable on Artificial Intelligence at Emory University School of Law starts at Emory Law tomorrow. matthewsag.com/2026-legal-s...
matthewsag.com
2026 Legal Scholars Roundtable on Artificial Intelligence – Matthew Sag
161
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
Emory Law is hosting our 5th annual Legal Scholars Roundtable in Artificial Intelligence, and I'm delivering this year's keynote: "How to Be a Good Cyborg—Understanding and Using Generative AI as a Legal Technology."
The image is a publicity poster for a keynote address featuring robots sitting in a circle with a small human child in the middle. It also features a QR code
020
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
Emory Law School Launching An AI Study Program www.law360.com/pulse/georgi...
law360.com
Emory Law School Launching An AI Study Program - Law360 Pulse
Emory University School of Law in Atlanta is launching a concentration center on artificial intelligence and the law that will be offered beginning in the upcoming academic year.
032
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
Not sure why papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... is still under review by @ssrn.bsky.social
papers.ssrn.com
Copyright's Jagged Frontier
<div> How should law respond to transformative technologies whose benefits are inseparable from their risks? This Article argues that the answer lies not in bi
110
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
I have set my email replies to passive aggressive.
020
Reposted by Matthew Sag
Peter Edge @edge-law.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
If push comes to shove, we can always switch assessment to viva voce to protect it from AI. Oh.
legalfutures.co.uk
High Court: Witness coached via smart glasses while giving evidence
A claimant giving evidence in the High Court was fed answers through smart glasses he was wearing that were connected to his mobile phone, a judge has found.
073
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
The claim that AI models are “just compression” misunderstands both compression and models. Memorization alone does not make GPT, Claude, or Gemini equivalent to MP3s of their training data. More here: matthewsag.com/the-fallacy-...
matthewsag.com
The Fallacy of Compression – Matthew Sag
021
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
I wrote a short post about my new paper, Copyright's Jagged Frontier, forthcoming article in the Duke Law Journal, matthewsag.com/copyrights-j.... Download it now on SSRN (who still have it marked as under review!?) papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
matthewsag.com
Copyright’s Jagged Frontier – Matthew Sag
069
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
It's interesting how much easier it is to set up LLM APIs for open AI and anthropic compared to Google. It's a reminder of just how massive Google is and how many different things it does.
110
Reposted by Matthew Sag
University of Richmond School of Law @richmondlaw.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
The Intellectual Property Institute's Evil Twin debate reminded us we can air our disagreements on IP policy in a friendly exchange. This year, Robert Brauneis & @matthewsag.bsky.social focused on AI at the WIPIP conference, hosted by @bulaw.bsky.social. www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdIK...
042
Reposted by Matthew Sag
Jim Gibson @mrjimi.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
A great Evil Twin Debate at WIPIP: Bob Brauneis & @matthewsag.bsky.social on “Larceny or Liberation: Is AI’s Non-Expressive Use Unfair To Humans?” They killed it -- really substantive and really funny. www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdIK... #richmondlaw #eviltwindebate
Evil Twin Debate TitleEvil Twin Debaters at tableBob Brauneis speakingMatt Sag speaking
031
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 01/03/2026
I’m no longer behind on any commitments (I can remember). It’s a strange feeling…
120
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 28/02/2026
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers..... Copyright's Jagged Frontier. Presented today at #WIPIP.
papers.ssrn.com
220
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
This is terrible on a human level, but people who don't use Dropbox are insane. (Or would that not have helped for some reason?)
140
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
matthewsag.com/legal-schola... Legal Scholars Roundtable on Artificial Intelligence 2026 Call for Papers (details on the website, submit via the google form). Deadline for submission is February 15, 2026
matthewsag.com
Legal Scholars Roundtable on Artificial Intelligence 2026 Call for Papers – Matthew Sag
023
Reposted by Matthew Sag
Kashana @kashana.blacksky.app · 03/01/2026
It’s a dark night when you look at the news and are forced to admit that you no longer believe in the power of the FIFA peace prize
4558811257
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
Content licensing deals between developers of artificial intelligence and content owners will not scale. www.promarket.org/2025/11/19/t.... "A handful of cherries does not make a sundae"
promarket.org
The False Hope of Content Licensing at Internet Scale - ProMarket
Is there a world where AI developers could get the training data they need through content licensing deals? Matthew Sag argues that content licensing deals between developers of artificial intelligence and content owners are only possible for large content owners and cannot feasibly apply to the bulk of producers and owners of content on the internet.
031
Reposted by Matthew Sag
The Information Society Project at Yale Law School @yaleisp.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
Thank you to @matthewsag.bsky.social for a wonderful presentation on "The Snoopy Solution: How Fair Use and Licensing for Generative AI Can Coexist" at today’s Law & Tech Talk!
082
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 17/11/2025
Very excited to go to Yale (first time ever) and to present this lecture.
051
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
@authorsalliance.bsky.social is doing great work and I was very pleased that they reposted my piece.
010
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 06/11/2025
The Authors Guild v. OpenAI ruling just set a troubling low bar for "substantial similarity" of fiction summaries. If ChatGPT outputs are infringing, then thousands of Wikipedia plot summaries are next. matthewsag.com/copyright-wi... #CopyrightLaw #AI
matthewsag.com
Copyright Winter is Coming (to Wikipedia?) – Matthew Sag
053
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 06/11/2025
A great roundup of anarchist briefs in Thomson Reuters' The Ross Intelligence. www.lawnext.com/2025/11/no-o...
lawnext.com
‘No One Can Own the Law’: Amici Come Out In Force to Support ROSS In Appeal of Copyright Ruling Favoring Thomson Reuters
As the long-running litigation between Thomson Reuters and ROSS Intelligence has moved to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for an interlocutory appeal of the trial judge's copyright rulings in fa...
010
Reposted by Matthew Sag
Mark Lemley @marklemley.bsky.social · 06/11/2025
Australia has so much electricity from solar power that it is going to start offering free electricity to everyone for at least three hours during the day as the wholesale price of power goes negative electrek.co/2025/11/04/a...
electrek.co
Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity
Australia's extensive solar power penetration makes so much energy that the government wants to offer free electricity at peak hours.
650233168057
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 04/11/2025
Harvey.AI is courting law schools like Westlaw/Lexis once did, but do we really need it? After a demo, my verdict: it's ChatGPT in a black turtleneck. Good for firms needing secure doc review & RAG, but law students can already do most of this with existing tools. matthewsag.com/do-law-schoo...
matthewsag.com
Do law schools need Harvey.AI? – Matthew Sag
082
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 30/10/2025
chatgptiseatingtheworld.com/2025/10/30/d... As predicted, but I think music generation is something of a special case.
chatgptiseatingtheworld.com
Dominoes start to drop: Uncharted Labs d/b/a Udio settles copyright lawsuit filed by UMG Recordings. Announce new AI music platform to launch in 2026.
Here’s the press release below. The settlement does not include Sony and Warner Music Group, 2 other plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which apparently will continue on. UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP AND UD…
141
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 20/10/2025
Claude is showing some resistance to being tested on memorization. claude.ai/share/603385...
This is a screenshot of a conversation with Claude. If you want to read the text, follow the link. It shows Claude resisting a name cloze test, but then backing down.
010
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 17/10/2025
How should law schools adapt to generative AI? my new paper, AI Policies for Law Schools, proposes a template policy and explains why we should prepare students for legal practice as it will be, not as it was. 📄 papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
000
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 16/10/2025
Wispr Flow is amazing, I can't recommend it highly enough, but it can interpret random sounds with something like this: "For more information, visit www.fema.org"
100
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 16/10/2025
My new post on competition from AI music and what it means matthewsag.com/competition-...
matthewsag.com
Competition from AI music, Country Girls Make Do – Matthew Sag
020
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
Why can't you copyright an AI-generated image that looks creative? My latest explores the "Skater Beagle" puzzle - how generative AI creates genuinely new works from latent space, not remix, but still lacks the human authorship copyright requires. matthewsag.com/skater-beagl...
matthewsag.com
Skater Beagle and the Puzzle of AI Creativity – Matthew Sag
152
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
matthewsag.com/drafting-law... This might be helpful.
matthewsag.com
Drafting Law School AI Policies – Matthew Sag
121
Reposted by Matthew Sag
Ashton Pittman @ashtonpittman.bsky.social · 11/09/2025
Photojournalist Bill Biggart died when the second tower collapsed on him on 9/11, but the film he shot that day and his flash card were recovered from the debris and developed, along with his flash card. You can see his amazing photos of 9/11, the last photos he took while alive, here:
billbiggart.com
September 11th — Bill Biggart Photographer
291350524
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 11/09/2025
A new NBER working paper by Stella Jia and Abhishek Nagaraj makes some stunning claims about the effects of pirated book corpora on large-language-model (LLM) performance. I have my doubts. matthewsag.com/piracy-proxi... #AI #Copyright #books3
010
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 08/09/2025
Why is everything about WordPress so ugly and awkward these days?
000
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
Invisible disabilities are all around you. www.huffpost.com/entry/dad-bu... "Advocating can be confusing and hard when your disability is invisible. ... People with disabilities, invisible or not, shouldn’t have to explain themselves. Nor should accommodations for them be met at the lowest bar."
huffpost.com
A Dad Tried To Bully Me Into Giving My Seat To His Kid. Here's What Happened When I Said No.
“Oh yeah? That’s your seat?” He reeked of beer and a jagged vein bulged from his left temple. “Why are you so special?”
0105
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 13/08/2025
Is the EU really the "rights-based" leader in AI regulation? In "The Illusory Normativity of Rights-Based AI Regulation," Yiyang Mei and I argue that this widely accepted assumption fundamentally misunderstands how EU AI regulation actually works. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
papers.ssrn.com
The Illusory Normativity of Rights-Based AI Regulation
<p>Whether and how to regulate AI is now a central question of governance. Across academic, policy, and international legal circles, the European Union is widel
092
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 07/08/2025
Stuck at O’Hare waiting hours for united to let us off the plane. I’m beginning to question my life choices.
231
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 24/07/2025
I have all discussions of the president muted, so I had to hunt for this
031
Matthew Sag @matthewsag.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
GenAI has kept me so busy on copyright law issues that I have not done any empirical work for a while. Switching from Stata to python with Claude is a revelation! You still need to do the conceptual work, but its amazing.
171