Policy

After several authors and class members raised objections to Anthropic’s $1.5 billion settlement over its widespread book piracy to train AI, a federal judge has delayed final approvals of the settlement. On Thursday, US District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin declined to rubber-stamp what’s regarded as the largest copyright settlement in US history. Instead, she wanted to better understand why some class members were objecting and opting out of the settlement. 

Source: Anthropic’s $1.5B copyright settlement is getting messy as judge delays approval

Businesses across industries now use generative AI to draft advertising and website text, create images and presentations, generate software code and develop product concepts. As that use becomes more common, so does an increasingly important question: who, if anyone, owns the output? Copyright depends on authorship, which the Court has described as the person “to whom anything owes its origin.” In the AI context, that makes human authorship the central issue.

Source: Who Owns AI-Generated Content? Documenting the Creation Process Is Critical

A federal magistrate blocked Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment from obtaining Suno’s settlement agreement with Warner Music Group in April. Now, the AI startup is pointing to the labels’ “mischaracterization” of the ruling as they attempt to reopen the dispute. That’s according to Suno’s response to the labels’ objection to the magistrate judge’s April 6 discovery ruling.

Source: Suno fights to keep Warner Music settlement terms away from UMG and Sony

A coalition of 81 cultural and media organizations in France — spanning the music, film, publishing, and press industries — has called on the country’s National Assembly to schedule debate on a bill that would create a legal presumption that AI providers use copyrighted content. The bill was adopted unanimously by the French Senate last month. It has since been transmitted to the National Assembly, but has not yet been placed on the legislative agenda, a step the coalition says is now urgent.

Source: Bill in France would force AI firms to prove they didn’t use copyrighted content to train models

Five major publishers — Hachette, Macmillan, McGraw Hill, Elsevier and Cengage — and the best-selling novelist Scott Turow have filed a class-action copyright infringement lawsuit against Meta and its founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg. The complaint, which was filed on Tuesday morning in United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, accuses Meta and Zuckerberg of illegally using millions of copyrighted works to train their artificial intelligence program Llama

Source: Five Publishers and Scott Turow Sue Meta and Mark Zuckerberg

A group of ten music industry organizations formally opposed a proposed 43% average increase to copyright registration fees, arguing the hike would lock out independent creators out of the registration system. The filing was in response to the Copyright Office’s proposed fee schedule published in March 2026. The proposal reflects historic inflation since the last fee study in 2020 and projected inflation over the next three years, the Copyright Office said.

Source: The US Copyright Office is hiking registration fees by 43%.