The major music companies and BMG have asked the US Supreme Court to overturn a ruling that lets songwriters reclaim the worldwide rights to their songs under American law. In a petition filed on June 11, the rightsholders warned that the decision would unleash “chaos” on the industry if left to stand, and asked the justices to reverse a January ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Source: Majors and BMG ask US Supreme Court to overturn copyright termination ruling
In the bill, a digital replica is described as “a newly created, computer-generated, highly realistic electronic representation that is readily identifiable as the voice or visual likeness of an individual.” It covers fully synthetic tracks and real recordings whose fundamental character has been materially altered, but exempts parody, commentary, news and authorized sampling.
Source: A landmark bill targeting AI deepfakes faces a US Senate Judiciary Committee vote on June 18
Fresh off of last month’s victory against pirate web site Anna’s Archive, 13 publishers across all segments of the industry have allied to sue yet another pirate site, WeLib, for copyright infringement. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, charges that the operators of WeLib “ copied the source code and most of the contents of” Anna’s Archive.”
Some 31 UK websites, backed by the Movement for an Open Web (MOW), have added new “Search-Only Contracts” (SOC) to their website terms and conditions which prohibit the copying and repurposing of content by LLMs such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google Gemini. The terms seek to beef up existing robots.txt notices on websites, which are currently widely ignored by generative AI companies.
Source: Publishers to bill AI firms for unwanted scraping– and take them to court if they don’t pay
Google says in a new court filing that YouTube’s terms of service grant a “broad license” for artificial intelligence models to be trained on music uploaded directly to the platform. This argument came in Google’s Monday (June 8) motion to dismiss copyright infringement litigation filed earlier this year by a group of independent artists, songwriters and producers.
Source: YouTube Terms of Service Allow AI Music Training, Google Says in Copyright Lawsuit
ASCAP has filed copyright infringement lawsuits against four US radio groups that it says have broadcast its members’ music without a valid license. The performing rights organization said on Tuesday (June 9) that the four groups operate a total of 15 radio stations. The defendants are Haugo Broadcasting Inc. in South Dakota, Spoon River Media, LLC in Indiana, Taylor Communications in Mississippi, and Barry Lunderville Radio in New Hampshire.
Source: ASCAP sues four radio groups for ‘prolonged unauthorized use of its members’ music
The European Commission on Wednesday published the Code of Practice on marking and labelling artificial intelligence (AI)-generated content, setting out voluntary measures to help providers and deployers comply with transparency requirements under the EU AI Act. The transparency obligations will become applicable on Aug. 2, requiring clear labelling of AI-generated or AI-manipulated content in specific cases, according to a statement.
Source: EU publishes code of practice for labelling AI-generated content
The American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada (AFM), which has 70,000 members, said Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group “received significant compensation” from the AI companies for past copyright violations and licensed “substantial” portions of their music catalogs to them, but haven’t shared that with the musicians.
Source: Musicians shortchanged by AI deals with labels, lawsuit alleges
A coalition of 227 rights organizations worldwide has called on France‘s National Assembly to pass a bill that would establish a legal presumption that AI companies have used copyrighted works to train their systems. The Darcos bill would insert a presumption into the French Intellectual Property Code that AI providers have used copyrighted works, unless they can prove otherwise.
Source: 220+ rights orgs worldwide urge France’s National Assembly to adopt AI training bill
Musicians, including Katy Perry and Billy Joel, sent a petition earlier this year to the U.S. Copyright Office to amend the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Now there’s an open letter to Congress signed by stars like Paul McCartney, Taylor Swift and U2 expressing a similar sentiment. Music labels like Sony Music and Universal Music Group have also endorsed the letter, which will be featured in ads on political websites like Politico and The Hill.