Policy

The Supreme Court justices ruled that ISPs and related platforms cannot be held liable for users’ copyright violations unless the service is specifically tailored for infringement or very actively encourages law-breaking piracy. X, which already defeated publishers’ direct infringement claims, now feels it has zero liability for secondary infringement. “If the Supreme Court had issued this opinion three years ago, X believes this court would have dismissed plaintiffs’ contributory infringement claim in its entirety,” X’s attorneys blasted less than 48 hours after the Supreme Court’s verdict. 

Source: Did the Supreme Court Just Hand Elon Musk a Giant Victory Over Music Publishers?

The UK Government has released its long-awaited copyright report, framed as an attempt to reconcile the competing interests of creators, technology companies and the wider innovation ecosystem. Rightsholders will welcome it, while the UK’s AI sector will find less comfort. Two core policy decisions (on training data and on the ownership of AI-generated outputs) mark a shift away from earlier, more developer-friendly proposals. Both decisions leave significant questions unanswered.

Source: Q&A: The UK’s Copyright Report – A Gift to Creators, a Problem for AI

By the numbers, said payment consists of the maximum $150,000 a pop in statutory damages for 48 Warner Music recordings as well as 50 recordings apiece for Sony Music and Universal Music – or $22.2 million total. And the label litigants further spelled out that “if needed,” they could identify a multitude of their works in the 86 million tracks that Anna’s Archive allegedly scraped from Spotify.

Source: Major Labels Seek ‘Extremely Conservative’ $322 Million in Damages from Anna’s Archive

Capitol CMG, Warner-Tamerlane Publishing, BMG Rights Management and Essential Music Publishing filed a motion on March 26 in the US Middle District of Louisiana asking the court to substitute them as defendants in place of Robert Resnik, who sold his asserted 25% stake in Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love) to the publishers on March 20. The publishers said in the filing that they acquired Resnik’s stake as they seek to ask the Supreme Court to review the Fifth Circuit’s January ruling.

Source: Publishers acquire stake in song at center of termination rights case; plan SCOTUS challenge

If a Cox subscriber used broadband to pirate a novel, Cox did not build its network to enable that outcome. When a user prompts an AI model to write in the style of Cormac McCarthy or generate a sonnet that reads like Shakespeare, the system was built explicitly to fulfill that request. Under Judge Thomas’s framework, that distinction could matter enormously.

Source: SCOTUS’s Cox Ruling Could Impact Publishers’ Fight Against AI

The decision establishes a clear rule that contributory copyright liability requires inducement of infringement or provision of a service tailored to infringement. Mere knowledge that a service is being used for infringement, even coupled with a failure to terminate the infringing user, is insufficient. This provides significant protection for ISPs and other general-purpose service providers.

Source: SCOTUS Copyright Decision a Big Win for ISPs and, Potentially, Other Digital Players

Filed on Monday in San Jose federal court, the publishers push back against tech companies’ continued claim that “fair use” applies to copying millions of copyrighted works without authorization to train AI models. Their case argues that Claude’s AI-generated lyrics are by definition derivatives of the publishers’ lyrics and “compete with and dilute the market” for them. “The evidence in this case is overwhelming,” the filing asserts, adding that Anthropic has “committed copyright infringement on a massive scale.”

Source: Major Publishers Make a Decisive Legal Strike Against Anthropic’s ‘Limitless AI Rip-Offs’

The Supreme Court on Wednesday sided with internet provider Cox Communications, holding that it cannot be held liable for music piracy even if it did not take adequate steps to curb the copyright infringement. The justices, in a 9-0 ruling, were weighing in on a lengthy legal fight between Cox and Sony Music Entertainment, which had sought huge damages against the internet provider for not blocking service to those who egregiously downloaded protected works.

Source: Supreme Court Limits Liability of ISPs for Music Piracy