Information wants to be free, the saying goes, but information also wants to be expensive. But which parts end up being free and which parts end up being expensive can get pretty complicated. With so much content flooding through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and the rest of the online platforms, tracking down who owns what (and how much it’s worth) has turned into one of the central questions of the internet. The answer to that question is copyright — specifically, who holds it and why, as mediated by automated systems like Content ID and a seemingly unending fight between platforms and content companies. This is where we navigate those issues, inside and outside the big platforms, the good systems and bad systems alike. If you’ve ever wondered how much a tweet is worth or why your sing-along YouTube videos keep getting taken down, this is the place to find out.
As Drake attempts to flip taunts by Kendrick Lamar, Rick Ross, and Metro Boomin on Sexyy Red’s “U My Everything,” the beat transitions into a sample of the AI-generated song “BBL Drizzy.”
While the Udio-generated master recording is public domain, creator King Willonious’ lyrics are copyright protected, so he could get paid for a writer credit, as Billboard reporter Kristin Robinson explains.
The New York Times reports on the campaign pushing the US International Trade Commission “to put the public interest of a product ahead of a ban.”
Apple tried avoiding its Watch Series 9 and Watch Ultra 2 import ban late last year by arguing it would have a “detrimental” effect on users. However, the ITC denied this request, saying “public interest favors the protection of intellectual property rights by excluding infringing products.”
The authors, Brian Keene, Abdi Nazemian, and Steward O’Nan, allege that Nvidia trained natural language aspects of its NeMo platform on a massive training dataset containing their work, according to Reuters. Their class-action suit, if certified, would cover anyone in the US with work involved in NeMo’s training.
Although Reuters doesn’t specify, the suit may be referencing the “Books3” dataset that other author lawsuits against OpenAI and Meta are based on.
In a lawsuit filed in a Virginia federal court, Apple pushed back on the US Patent and Trademark Office’s decision to reject its trademarks for its Vision Pro developer tools, “Reality Composer” and “Reality Converter.”
Apple argues that the two names won’t be confused with the “Reality Control” and “Reality Engine” products owned by Zero Density, the Turkish company that challenged the marks.
The Guardian reports that Squishmallows parent company Jazwares is suing Build-A-Bear over its new line of rotund, kawaii animals, Skoosherz, accusing it of copying their toys’ “simplified Asian-style kawaii faces.”
Not backing down, Build-A-Bear countersued Jazwares, saying Skoosherz extends its existing line of cute animal toys. This is not the first time the Warren Buffet-owned Jazwares has sued for copyright infringement, it filed a lawsuit last year against Alibaba for selling fake Squishmallows.
In light of Spec Ops: The Line getting yanked from online storefronts over music licensing issues, it’s a good time to re-read a 2019 piece from GamesIndustry.biz on why this problem seems so common. Bottom line: games spent a long time being considered more ephemeral than other media like movies, and faced with the convoluted structure of music copyright, many studios negotiated deals to match.
[GamesIndustry.biz]
The Scholarly Press Backlist Revival will put out-of-print academic monographs online for free under deals with publishers like MIT Press, hoping to fix a “black hole in the cultural and scholarly record.” If it works out, it seems like a great option for a swathe of copyrighted works that aren’t seen as profitable to sell — but shouldn’t be locked away because of it.
Adobe’s top lawyer discusses the future of copyright, why the Figma acquisition fell through, and why he’s optimistic AI won’t put creatives out of work.
But forget the thinkpieces about weapons of mass destruction — it’s that Kai Bird, coauthor of J. Robert Oppenheimer biography American Prometheus, is part of a fresh group of authors joining one of the numerous copyright lawsuits against generative AI companies.
No, not the one with Michael Chabon. Or the Sarah Silverman one. Or the one with George R.R. Martin... although those are in the same court district, so we wouldn’t be surprised if their fates are closely linked. My god, can the Copyright Office finish reading all those public comments and help clear things up?
TechDirt published a helpful reminder yesterday that the 1928 “Steamboat Willie” iteration of the Disney character will become the people’s mouse on January 1st, 2024. The article also points to a Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain guide for using the early design.
You could take a page out of the Winnie-the-Pooh: the Deforested Edition playbook and create “Steamboat Willie: the Climate Change Edition,” in which Mickey’s boat is grounded in a dry riverbed. You could create a feminist remake with Minnie Mouse as the central figure. You could reimagine Mickey and Minnie dedicating themselves to animal welfare.
[web.law.duke.edu]
Sure, it’s not as eye-catching as Musk telling Disney to go fuck itself. But Musk and The New York Times’ Sorkin had a painfully ill-informed conversation about intellectual property and AI, starting with the factually wrong statement that AI companies claim they’re not training on copyrighted works. It’s been driving me up a wall, so kudos to Mike Masnick for laying out how silly it all was.
The publisher behind the songwriting copyrights to some of the most popular music ever recorded doesn’t think AI spells doom for the industry.
At midnight ET tonight, the US Copyright Office will close its extended public comment period for how copyright should play with AI. And while I’m not seeing the absolute circus that we got with 22 million (mostly fake) net neutrality comments, it’s received a respectable number so far! I’m looking forward to digging into them.
[Federal Register]
After 30 years teaching law, the internet policy legend is as worried as you’d think about AI and TikTok — and he has surprising thoughts about balancing free speech with protecting democracy.
Getty’s entire brand is built on authenticity. CEO Craig Peters sat down with us at Code to talk about how the company is dealing with AI and disinformation.
The media mogul is working on a syndicate of big publishers including the NYT that will pressure AI companies into huge payments for training data one way or another.
Payments on the scale the publishers expect would mark a dramatic change for companies like Google, which have built high-margin business in large part because they — unlike media companies from Netflix to Comcast — don’t pay for content.
Unless the publishers lower their expectations, or the tech companies adjust their fundamental sense of what it is to be a platform, this high stakes conflict is likely to escalate.
I will remind you that anyone who confidently predicts how a fair use AI copyright case will play out is getting paid by one side or another — fair use cases, even on largely similar facts, are a coin flip every time, and they’re getting weirder not simpler.
The Wall Street Journal writes about the ubiquity of those unauthorized, user-uploaded movie clips on TikTok that may sometimes show up in your recommendations on the service.
WSJ reports that uploaders “appear to” game the algorithm with bot followers that boost a video’s popularity to get it into users’ FYP. Then, once users linger on a few, the algorithm surfaces more.
[The Wall Street Journal]
Publishers filed a lawsuit accusing the book piracy site of hosting an “enormous collection of infringing works that anyone with an internet connection can access.” As TorrentFreak notes, however, this isn’t the first legal threat it’s faced:
After being sued by publisher Elsevier in 2015 at the same court, Libgen and the infamous Sci-Hub were ordered to shut down. While Libgen briefly disappeared, both sites ultimately ignored the decision.
Many people know the Internet Archive through the Wayback Machine, one of the most important web history repositories in existence. But its broader archival initiatives have left it facing legal challenges from the publishing and music industries. On today’s Vergecast I broke down the status of the suits and what they could mean for the future of digital preservation... and while we’re at it, what’s copyright really meant for, anyway?
