Policy

A coalition of independent musicians from across the United States has filed a lawsuit against tech giant Google over more than just allegations that the company’s AI models rely on stealing and copying original works. In fact, this lawsuit could be the “broadest, most comprehensive attack on the business model of AI-generated music.”

Source: Indie Artist Coalition Files Major Lawsuit Against Google Over AI Copyright Theft

A packed courtroom in Munich on Monday (March 9) heard oral proceedings in the copyright case brought by Germany’s GEMA against AI music generator Suno. The collecting society alleges that Suno used, stored and reproduced copyrighted recordings of world-famous songs to train its AI tool. The hearing ended without a ruling. A decision date has been set for June 12, 2026.

Source: GEMA vs. Suno: German court hears landmark AI music copyright case

To help train AI models, Meta and other tech companies have downloaded and shared pirated books via BitTorrent from Anna’s Archive and other shadow libraries. In an ongoing lawsuit, Meta now argues that uploading pirated books to strangers via BitTorrent qualifies as fair use. The company also stresses that the data helped establish U.S. global leadership in AI.

Source: Uploading Pirated Books via BitTorrent Qualifies as Fair Use, Meta Argues

In a filing made March 6 in the U. S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, 13 book and journal publishers filed suit seeking a permanent injunction to stop Anna’s Archive from copying and distributing millions of infringing files. The suit highlights the magnitude of the material Anna’s Archive has stolen and the unorthodox methods it uses to monetize the material.

Source: Publishers Charge Anna’s Archive with Copyright Infringement

The UK’s creative industries must not be sacrificed in the pursuit of speculative gains in AI technology, a House of Lords committee has warned, as the government prepares to reveal the economic cost of proposals to change copyright rules. A report by peers has urged ministers to develop a licensing regime for the use of creative works in AI products and abandon proposals to let tech firms use them without permission.

Source: UK arts must not be sacrificed for speculative AI gains, peers say

Perplexity wrote to a New York judge last week arguing the News Corp subsidiaries should be forced to hand over records showing the hundreds of queries they made to “fish” for a basis to sue within its AI search tool before launching the claim in October 2024. Perplexity told Judge Katherine Failla: “This discovery would reveal an inconvenient truth: Plaintiffs repeatedly and deceptively crossed the line from investigation to entrapment.”

Source: Perplexity claims News Corp tried to ‘entrap’ chatbot to make copyright case

The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to take up the ​issue of whether art generated by artificial intelligence can be copyrighted under U.S. law, turning ‌away a case involving a computer scientist from Missouri who was denied a copyright for a piece of visual art made by his AI system. Plaintiff Stephen Thaler had appealed to the justices after lower courts upheld a U.S. Copyright Office ​decision that the AI-crafted visual art at issue in the case was ineligible for copyright protection ​because it did not have a human creator.

Supreme Court declines to hear dispute over copyrights for AI-generated material