Policy

The battle between Hollywood and generative artificial intelligence (AI) took an important procedural turn this month in one of the most closely watched AI copyright cases pending in the United States. While some headlines suggested that Disney and Universal were broadly ordered to disclose their own internal AI use, the actual discovery ruling is more nuanced. The court permitted only limited discovery into AI-related issues tied to market harm, while rejecting most of Midjourney’s broader requests regarding the studios’ internal AI development and use.

Source: AI Copyright Showdown: Can Hollywood Challenge AI While Using It?

A New York federal judge has denied Sony Music Entertainment‘s request to add 30,442 sound recordings to its copyright infringement lawsuit against AI music platform Udio. The ruling from Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, keeps the case at the 333 works that remain in the case. Sony filed the motion on May 22 in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, saying it had identified the additional recordings after gaining access to Udio‘s training data in discovery.

Source: Judge denies Sony Music bid to add over 30,000 recordings to Udio lawsuit

A coalition of Australia’s leading music and creative organizations has united to issue an open letter demanding stronger copyright protections in the face of growing concerns over unauthorized AI training. The coalition includes APRA AMCOS, ARIA, The Copyright Agency, Australian Music Centre, National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Music Office, Australian Publishers Association, Screenrights, Screen Producers Australia, AIR, and many more.

Source: Australian Music Industry Demands Action Against Mass-Scale AI Training

The Copyright Act grants authors the exclusive right “to display the copyrighted work publicly,” and that right has proven remarkably resistant to resolution in the internet context. Courts across the country have been unable to agree on a deceptively simple question: when a website embeds an image that lives on someone else’s server, and that image appears on a visitor’s screen, who has displayed it?

Source: Is Embedding Someone Else’s Image Copyright Infringement? The Fifth Circuit May Finally Tell Us