I've been thinking about copyright law again, because I'm an insufferable dork.
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My best guess is that it was the 2019 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com, LLC
And that my rage at the way our system works was at least partially misplaced.
That ruling said that you can't pursue a copyright lawsuit until you have received registration for a copyright. Just filing the paperwork is not enough.
You can still pursue damages from before the work was registered, but you can't file the suit until after registration.
I think! I am not a lawyer.
Wow. I didn't know about that ruling. That would create a pretty big imbalance between corporate and independent works.
But the bit I'm actually mad about, the gist, is that while you can pursue damages from before the work was registered, you can only pursue "actual" damages, and not statutory damages and therefore people who can afford to register their works at the time of publication are afforded greater protection under the law than people who can't.
You can buy your way into more legal protection.
A few years ago, sometime since 2016, the US supreme court ruled that you can't pursue legal claims for copyright infringement or license violations or whatever unless you've registered your copyright.
or something like that, it might have been the copyright office. I don't really remember the specifics. I am not a/your lawyer.
I do remember going on a massive rant about it on fedi, so it was probably 2017.
My rant was from the perspective of a creator, and was hyperbolic and reactive and probably substantially wrong. But the reason I'm thinking about it today is Different than it was then.