After four months of quiet, Epidemic Sound CEO Oscar Hoglund has finally spoken out at length in response to allegations that his company was promoting “fake artists” on Spotify’s playlists, and undercutting licensing fees and royalty payouts to traditional labels.
Source: Those ‘Fake Artists’ on Spotify? Epidemic Sound CEO Oscar Höglund Says There Was ‘No Special Deal’
By combining the neural network and the machine-learning algorithm, the study found that AI was able to correctly identify a work’s author 80 percent of the time. Even more impressive was its ability to detect each and every forgery with which it was presented, just from looking at a single stroke.
Source: Artificial Intelligence Can Now Spot Art Forgeries by Comparing Brush Strokes | artnet News
The proposal does not extend to copyright-protected content, which includes music streaming services such as Spotify and Apple’s iTunes, electronic books, television series and movies.
Source: EU agrees to end country-specific limits for online retailers
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Record labels are irrelevant because they’ve been disrupted by a venture-funded technology start-up. The major labels exploit artists, who can now distribute their music directly to consumers online, plus get the data they need to make money playing concerts, selling merch or doing sponsorships.
Source: Will Tech Startups Finally Make Record Labels Obsolete? Not So Fast
On a panel that included Singapore’s Aemanda Hannah Chan of Plexxie and German author and social-media specialist Kathrin Weßling, Orbanism co-founder Christiane Frohmann from Berlin said, “On the Internet—more precisely, in social networks—the ideas and meanings of writing, publishing and reading have changed.”
Source: Singapore: StoryDrive Asia 2017 Gathers ASEAN Publishers
Canada’s act was introduced with a stated intention of bringing copyright law into the digital age, and it promised to balance the needs of creators and users. Now, five years on, the act and its many “user-friendly” exceptions have become the focus of international attention for perceived damage.
Source: On Canada’s Copyright Modernization Act: ‘Where Does Balance Fit?’
The collective licensing system needed to be redesigned to face the new challenges brought by the digital era, such as the explosion of music consumption with volumes of data to process growing exponentially, and the democratization of new usages to monitor, such as User Generated Contents or remixes.
Source: How Collective Management Organizations Remain Relevant in the Digital Era? – Slush Music
The move sets the stage for a vote next month that could reshape the entire digital ecosystem by giving Internet providers more power to determine what websites and online services their customers can see and use.
Source: The FCC has unveiled its plan to repeal its net neutrality rules
The Justice Department on Monday sued AT&T to block its $85 billion merger with Time Warner, court filings show. In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, federal prosecutors argued that the merger would hurt competitors and consumers.
The Office of the US Trade Representative has released a 17-page document outlining new objectives for renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement, including commitments on IP protection.