PRS paid out GBP £274.9 million (USD $367.6 million) at the current exchange rate) to songwriters, composers and music publishers in December, a 4% increase over the same period a year earlier. In all, 51,500 PRS members will receive a payment this quarter, among them 400 songwriters and composers who will receive royalties for the first time.
Source: The UK’s PRS for Music reports largest-ever quarterly royalty payout at $368m, up 4% YoY
Warner Bros. Discovery’s board has formally said “no thanks” to the $108 billion takeover bid from David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance and unanimously reiterated its support for the Netflix deal. Following WBD’s announcement, Paramount affirmed that it will continue to make its case directly to shareholders for the latest $30-per-share hostile offer — indicating for now that it won’t be going any higher.
IP acquisition is only the first step – one quickly followed by potentially overwhelming blocking and tackling. A typical catalog requires ingesting data from hundreds of platforms and sources spanning DSPs, sub-publishers, CMOs, and social media platforms, often in conflicting formats. And that’s just a working list of initial considerations to properly collect associated IP revenues, with downstream payouts and revenue splits another major area of concern.
Source: Billions Are Flowing Into Music IP — Can Financial Systems Handle It?
After announcing earlier this year a framework for an open AI ecosystem, the nonprofit Creative Commons has come out in favor of “pay-to-crawl” technology — a system to automate compensation of website content when accessed by machines, like AI web crawlers. In July, the organization announced a plan to provide a legal and technical framework for dataset sharing between companies that control the data and the AI providers that want to train on it.
Source: Creative Commons announces tentative support for AI ‘pay-to-crawl’ systems | TechCrunch
A broad coalition of news publishers have backed shared licensing technology which seeks to protect content in the AI era. Really Simple Licensing (RSL) sets out an agreed way of controlling and monetizing journalism which is used to feed large language models. RSL is being developed by RSL Collective, a non-profit collective rights organization led by former CEO of IAB Publishing Doug Leeds and former CEO of Cardspring Eckart Walther.
Source: Major publishers back universal AI licensing technology
Disney’s three-year licensing partnership with OpenAI includes just one of exclusivity, Disney CEO Bob Iger told CNBC. The company signed the partnership with OpenAI last week that will bring its iconic characters to the AI firm’s Sora video generator. Once that exclusive year is up, Disney is free to sign similar deals with other AI companies.
Source: Disney’s OpenAI deal is exclusive for just one year — then it’s open season | TechCrunch
Ninety-five per cent of the more than 10,000 people who had their say over how music, novels, films and other works should be protected from copyright infringements by tech companies called for copyright to be strengthened and a requirement for licensing in all cases or no change to copyright law. By contrast, only 3% of people backed the government’s initial preferred tech company-friendly option.
Source: Boost for artists in AI copyright battle as only 3% back UK active opt-out plan
A federal judge on Monday advanced a trio of copyright claims brought by digital publisher Ziff Davis against ChatGPT maker OpenAI, while the artificial intelligence firm won dismissal of several others. Ziff Davis, a global digital media company whose portfolio includes leading brands in technology, shopping, gaming and entertainment, accuses OpenAI of scraping its online content without authorization to train the artificial intelligence chatbot’s language technology.
Source: Judge advances digital publisher Ziff Davis’ ChatGPT copyright infringement claims
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has declined to comment on its possible probe into AllTrack and Pro Music Rights (PMR). Meanwhile, PMR says it’s “actively exploring legal action” against the congressman who requested the investigation. One week ago, that congressman, U.S. Representative Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI), asked the FTC to “examine potential unfair or deceptive acts or practices” on the part of the mentioned performing rights organizations (PROs).
Source: FTC Says ‘No Comment’ on Possible AllTrack, Pro Music Probe
WGA said it will meet with Disney “to probe the terms of this deal, including the extent to which user-generated videos use the work of WGA members. We will continue to fight to protect our members’ creative and economic interests in the context of AI technology.” Under Disney’s three-year licensing agreement, OpenAI’s Sora will be able to generate user-prompted videos from a set of more than 200 masked, animated or creature characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars.
Source: Disney’s OpenAI Deal ‘Appears to Sanction’ AI Company’s ‘Theft of Our Work,’ WGA Says