The battle between technology heavyweights and many of the country’s most famous creative companies and artists is playing out in Washington and in court. At stake are billions of dollars and precedents that could shape the future of AI and U.S. copyright law. While the fight is far from over, some in creative industries fear it might be too late to stop the advance of AI as it roils their professions.
Source: Hollywood Confronts AI Copyright Chaos in Washington, Courts
The Danish government said on Thursday it would strengthen protection against digital imitations of people’s identities with what it believes to be the first law of its kind in Europe. It defines a deepfake as a very realistic digital representation of a person, including their appearance and voice. The Danish culture minister, Jakob Engel-Schmidt, said he hoped the bill before parliament would send an “unequivocal message” that everybody had the right to the way they looked and sounded.
Source: Denmark to tackle deepfakes by giving people copyright to their own features
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide a copyright dispute between Cox Communications and a group of music labels following a judicial decision that threw out a $1 billion jury verdict against the internet service provider over alleged piracy of music by Cox customers. The justices took up Cox’s appeal of the lower court’s decision that it was still liable for copyright infringement by users of its internet service despite the decision to overturn the verdict.Source: US Supreme Court to review billion-dollar Cox Communications copyright case
A group of authors, including Pulitzer prize winner Kai Bird, accuse Microsoft of using copyrighted works to train its large language model. The class action complaint filed by several authors and professors, including Pulitzer prize winner Kai Bird and Whiting award winner Victor LaVelle, claims that Microsoft ignored the law by downloading around 200,000 copyrighted works and feeding it to the company’s Megatron-Turing Natural Language Generation model.
Source: Authors take Microsoft to court in yet another AI v copyright battle
The UK government has announced an over $500 million investment, including in the music space, under its Creative Industries Sector Plan. That £380 million (currently $512.9 million) package was disclosed today as part of the decade-long Creative Industries Sector Plan. The latter was released alongside a broader Industrial Strategy designed to “make the UK the best place to do business.”
Source: UK Gov Unveils $500M Creative Industries Sector Plan Investment
Two U.S. senators have requested that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigate Spotify due to allegations that the company bundled its music streaming and audiobook services into a more expensive subscription without obtaining user consent, while also reducing royalty payments to creators in the process.
Source: Senators urge FTC to investigate Spotify’s higher-priced bundled subscription | TechCrunch
Judge William Alsup just issued his order on summary judgment. It’s a major win for the plaintiffs Bartz, even though the court ruled that the use of copies to train Anthropic’s model were fair use. Significantly, the court also ruled that Anthropic’s acquisition of pirated books from shadow libraries (Books3, LibGen, and Pirate Library Mirror) that Anthropic used to create its own general library at Anthropic was copyright infringement.
The lawsuit marks the first time major studios have sought to enforce their copyrights against an AI company. But the suit takes on one small company — Midjourney has 11 employees — for relatively egregious violations. “It just seems like the lowest hanging fruit and the easiest way to make a point,” says one exec at a rival company. At least for now, it isn’t a full-scale fight against AI.
Source: Why Midjourney Made the Perfect Target for Hollywood’s First AI Lawsuit
Trump will issue a third executive order delaying enforcement of the so-called TikTok ban for 90 days, the White House said. Under the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, ByteDance is required to sell a controlling interest in TikTok to non-Chinese owners or be outlawed. The law does not permit Trump to postpone its enforcement. But he has done so anyway.
Source: Trump Will Delay Enforcing TikTok Ban for a Third Time, White House Says
Proposals to regulate artificial intelligence have been delayed by at least a year as UK ministers plan a bumper bill to regulate the technology and its use of copyrighted material. Peter Kyle, the technology secretary, intends to introduce a “comprehensive” AI bill in the next parliamentary session to address concerns about issues including safety and copyright.
Source: UK ministers delay AI regulation amid plans for more ‘comprehensive’ bill