Copyright | The Verge The Verge is about technology and how it makes us feel. Founded in 2011, we offer our audience everything from breaking news to reviews to award-winning features and investigations, on our site, in video, and in podcasts. 2026-04-04T17:57:12+00:00 https://www.theverge.com/rss/copyright/index.xml https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/verge-rss-large_80b47e.png?w=150&h=150&crop=1 Terrence O’Brien <![CDATA[A folk musician became a target for AI fakes and a copyright troll]]> https://www.theverge.com/?p=907111 2026-04-04T13:57:12-04:00 2026-04-04T13:52:10-04:00 Musician Murphy Campbell in a black and white photo that appears to be taken on an old-school large format film camera.
Murphy Campbell is at the center of a brewing storm around AI and a broken copyright system. | Image: Murphy Campbell

In January, folk artist Murphy Campbell discovered several songs on her Spotify profile that did not belong there. They were songs that she had recorded, but she'd never uploaded them to Spotify, and something was off about the vocals.

She quickly surmised that someone had pulled performances of the songs she posted to YouTube, created AI covers, and uploaded them to streaming platforms under her name. I ran one of the songs, "Four Marys", through two different AI detectors, and it seemed to support her suspicions with both saying it was probably AI-generated.

Campbell was shocked, "I was kind of under the impression that we had a little b …

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]]> Emma Roth <![CDATA[Cox Communications not liable for pirated music, Supreme Court rules]]> https://www.theverge.com/?p=900502 2026-03-25T13:03:20-04:00 2026-03-25T13:03:20-04:00 Photo illustration of the Supreme Court building with gavels behind.

The Supreme Court has issued its ruling in a lengthy copyright battle between Cox Communications and major record labels, determining that the cable and internet service provider isn't responsible for illegally downloaded music, as reported earlier by the Associated Press. The unanimous decision says Cox "neither induced its users' infringement nor provided a service tailored to infringement."

Several record labels, led by Sony Music, sued Cox in 2018, alleging the company allowed 60,000 internet subscribers to download over 10,000 copyrighted songs illegally. A jury found Cox liable for piracy in 2019 and granted Sony $1 billion in damages …

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]]> Emma Roth <![CDATA[AI-generated art can’t be copyrighted after Supreme Court declines to review the rule]]> https://www.theverge.com/?p=887678 2026-03-04T12:00:09-05:00 2026-03-02T12:58:05-05:00 Photo illustration of the Supreme Court building with pixelated sky.

The US Supreme Court has declined to hear a case over whether AI-generated art can obtain a copyright, as reported earlier by Reuters. The Monday decision comes after Stephen Thaler, a computer scientist from Missouri, appealed a court's decision to uphold a ruling that found AI-generated art can't be copyrighted.

In 2019, the US Copyright Office rejected Thaler's request to copyright an image, called A Recent Entrance to Paradise, on behalf of an algorithm he created. The Copyright Office reviewed the decision in 2022 and determined that the image doesn't include "human authorship," disqualifying it from copyright protection.

After Thale …

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]]> Janko Roettgers <![CDATA[Everyone is stealing TV]]> https://www.theverge.com/?p=873416 2026-02-05T14:11:12-05:00 2026-02-04T08:30:00-05:00 Photo illustration of a Dodge truck with a sticker of Calvin peeing on a satellite dish.

Walk the rows of the farmers market in a small, nondescript Texas town about an hour away from Austin, and you might stumble across something unexpected: In between booths selling fresh, local pickles and pies, there's a table piled high with generic-looking streaming boxes, promising free access to NFL games, UFC fights, and any cable TV network you can think of.

It's called the SuperBox, and it's being demoed by Jason, who also has homemade banana bread, okra, and canned goods for sale. "People are sick and tired of giving Dish Network $200 a month for trash service," Jason says. His pitch to rural would-be cord-cutters: Buy a SuperBox fo …

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]]> Emma Roth <![CDATA[X accuses music publishers of ‘weaponizing’ DMCA takedowns]]> https://www.theverge.com/?p=860013 2026-01-09T18:01:11-05:00 2026-01-09T17:59:24-05:00

X is suing music publishers and their trade group, the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA), accusing them of attempted coercion in their ongoing battle over licensing, as reported earlier by The Hollywood Reporter. The Elon Musk-owned platform accuses music publishers of colluding with the NMPA to "coerce X into taking licenses to musical works from the industry as a whole, denying X the benefit of competition between music publishers."

In the antitrust lawsuit filed on Friday, X claims that the NMPA and music publishers "weaponized" the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) with requests to take down allegedly infringing conte …

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]]> Barbara Krasnoff Emma Roth <![CDATA[Public domain 2026: Betty Boop, Pluto, and Nancy Drew set free]]> https://www.theverge.com/?p=852332 2026-01-02T08:05:18-05:00 2026-01-01T11:30:00-05:00 An image of Betty Boop in Dizzy Dishes
Betty Boop made her debut as an anthropomorphic dog in Dizzy Dishes. | Image: Fleischer Studios

Some years ago, I was writing a science fiction short story in which I wanted to incorporate verses from a 1928 song, "Button Up Your Overcoat." However, when I sold the story, my editor told me that since the song was still copyrighted, it was safer not to include the verses.

If I had written the story today, I could have used them - because the song passed into public domain two years ago.

If you're looking for songs, books, or movies with content you want to use, you are probably examining which of your favorites are headed for the public domain. This year, copyrighted works created in 1930 (except for sound recordings, where the date …

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]]> Richard Lawler <![CDATA[OpenAI’s billion-dollar Disney deal puts Mickey Mouse and Marvel in Sora]]> https://www.theverge.com/?p=842348 2025-12-11T10:54:37-05:00 2025-12-11T09:32:21-05:00

A new three-year licensing agreement announced between Disney and ChatGPT operator OpenAI will allow the Sora video generator to create "user-prompted social videos" that feature more than 200 characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars. "The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence marks an important moment for our industry, and through this collaboration with OpenAI we will thoughtfully and responsibly extend the reach of our storytelling through generative AI, while respecting and protecting creators and their works," said Disney CEO Bob Iger.

According to OpenAI's blog post announcing the deal:

Sora will be able to genera …

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]]> Emma Roth <![CDATA[The New York Times sues Perplexity for producing ‘verbatim’ copies of its work]]> https://www.theverge.com/?p=839006 2025-12-05T11:09:20-05:00 2025-12-05T10:42:56-05:00 A photo showing the New York Times building

The New York Times has escalated its legal battle against the AI startup Perplexity, as it's now suing the AI "answer engine" for allegedly producing and profiting from responses that are "verbatim or substantially similar copies" of the publication's work.

The lawsuit, filed in a New York federal court on Friday, claims Perplexity "unlawfully crawls, scrapes, copies, and distributes" content from the NYT. It comes after the outlet's repeated demands for Perplexity to stop using content from its website, as the NYT sent cease-and-desist notices to the AI startup last year and most recently in July, according to the lawsuit. The Chicago Tri …

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]]> Mia Sato <![CDATA[The music industry is all in on AI]]> https://www.theverge.com/?p=825382 2025-11-20T15:02:21-05:00 2025-11-20T14:16:34-05:00

Two years ago, "BBL Drizzy" was the AI music shot heard around the world: a song with vocals that sounded like Drake bubbled up from nowhere and launched what was shaping up to be a battle of artistry, likeness, and of course, copyright. The big three labels - Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Records - sued AI companies Udio and Suno for copyright infringement "en masse"; they staged public spats with TikTok over issues including AI content on the platform; and they began spinning up AI detection tools to keep tabs on how their music moved around.

Now the music industry and AI startups appear largely aligned …

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]]> Elissa Welle <![CDATA[What happens when an AI-generated artist gets a record deal? A copyright mess]]> https://www.theverge.com/?p=785792 2025-10-16T09:33:49-04:00 2025-09-25T13:09:34-04:00

Two weeks ago, record company Hallwood Media signed a deal with Telisha "Nikki" Jones after negotiations that purportedly included an offer of $3 million, Billboard reported. Jones is a Mississippi-based lyricist behind the R&B artist "Xania Monet" whose most popular song on Spotify racked up over 1 million listens, and whose Reels regularly top 100,000 views on Instagram - despite her likeness, vocals, and music being AI-generated.

Multiple copyright experts speaking with The Verge have been quite clear: the law is not at all settled but generally one cannot copyright AI-generated works by themselves without human intervention, but you may …

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