Description: Blackbeard’s Queen Anne’s Revenge Shipwreck Project videographer files Federal lawsuit over copyright infringement and the constitutionality of "Blackbeard's Law" against the State of North Carolina, NCDNCR & the Friends of Queen Anne’s Revenge.
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The infamous pirate Blackbeard was once the scourge of the Atlantic but over 300 years later a different kind of pirate sails North Carolina’s waters. And a case heard at the United States Supreme Court has returned to Raleigh. On February 8 th , filmmaker Frederick Allen of Nautilus Productions, filed an amended complaint in Allen v. Cooper against the state of North Carolina and the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (NCDNCR) over the misuse of Allen’s copyrighted footage of Black
North Carolina has argued that Allen and other creators are barred from suing states and state entities for copyright infringement, even though states can sue their own citizens for infringing use of copyrighted works created by those very same states, under the guise of “Sovereign Immunity.” Allen’s lawsuit alleges the above inequity in federal copyright law and the passage of North Carolina’s “Blackbeard’s Law,” illegally converted Nautilus’ footage of Blackbeard’s flagship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge , in
Allen stated, “The Copyright Clause and the 5 th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution are meant to protect citizens from unjust and illegal takings of their property without due process or compensation. This lawsuit will benefit all creators, who drive the American economy, and help protect them from intellectual property theft by states. Nowhere in the federal copyright statutes are states exempted from copyright law or immune from lawsuits – yet North Carolina argues just that.”