First teased at Google I/O, Meta just announced that WhatsApp is officially rolling out to Wear OS smartwatches, provided you have a Wear OS 3 smartwatch. The app itself isn’t complicated. It’ll allow users to start new conversations, reply to messages, and take calls from the wrist. They’ll also be able to respond with voice messages, emoji, regular text, and quick replies. And if you have an LTE-capable Wear OS 3 watch, you’ll be able to respond to messages without needing your phone nearby. The main thing here is timing and reach. For starters, the Samsung Unpacked event is happening soon, where we’re expecting to see the new Galaxy Watch 6 and, if rumours are to be believed, the Galaxy Watch 6 Classic. There’s a good chance that Samsung’s new watches will be the first to run Wear OS 4 – just as the Galaxy Watch 4 lineup was the first to debut Wear OS 3. This is also a continuation of Google’s push to bolster Wear OS’s third-party app ecosystem. Alongside WhatsApp, the company noted at I/O that Spotify is set to release new Tiles for its Wear OS app this year, while Peloton also recently launched its own Wear OS app.

INSTAGRAM EMBEDS DON’T VIOLATE COPYRIGHT LAWS, COURT RULES

Instagram isn’t liable for copyright infringement when images are embedded on third-party websites, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled. The decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by two photographers, Alexis Hunley and Matthew Brauer, who accused Instagram of violating copyright laws by enabling Time and BuzzFeed News to embed their copyrighted photos in online articles. In 2016, Time published an article titled “These Photographers Are Covering the Presidential Campaign on Instagram,” which included Brauer’s embedded Instagram photo of Hillary Clinton. BuzzFeed News similarly posted an embedded photo taken by Hunley in its 2020 article about the Black Lives Matter protests. The pair accused Instagram of secondary copyright infringement as a result, with Hunley alleging that Instagram “intentionally and brazenly encouraged, aided and induced” third-party websites to embed copyrighted images “without making any effort to control or stop the rampant infringement.” The court ultimately ruled that Instagram couldn’t be held liable for secondary copyright infringement in this case, as it found that “embedding a photo does not ‘display a copy’ of the underlying images.”