Second Circuit rejects electronic database settlement

On grounds I personally find fairly unconvincing--I'm with the dissent; those Class C claims are worthless without registration likely exceeding their damages value, so anything they get is gravy. Here's a hypothesis for debate, which I'm not completely convinced of but is worth discussing: despite what we tend to think about the Second Circuit's copyright-friendliness, in the past ten years the Second Circuit has more often made it harder for authors, in practice, to receive benefits from their work than it has made it easier.