The UK’s Copyright Tribunal has ruled in favor of PRS for Music in its dispute with the UK Cinema Association (UKCA) over the licensing of music in cinemas, according to the society. In an announcement on Monday (October 12), PRS said the Tribunal had approved changes to its cinema tariff, known as Tariff C, including an increase in the royalty rate cinemas pay to use its members’ music.
Source: UK’s Copyright Tribunal backs PRS For Music in cinema licensing dispute
The New York Times, Agence France-Presse and The Economist on Monday joined more than 40 publishers in a coalition aimed at preventing AI firms from using or profiting from their content without permission. The Standards for Publisher Usage Rights (SPUR) coalition, launched in February, now has more than 80 members across over 20 countries. New members include The Atlantic and Brazil’s National Association of Newspapers, joining founding members such as the Financial Times, BBC and Associated Press.Source: NYT, Economist among publishers joining coalition to curb unpaid AI use
Australian voters would prefer changes to copyright law that deliver some compensation to creatives rather than free-riding by AI companies training their models offshore, according to a new poll. A YouGov poll of 1,500 people, commissioned by Diffusion, a strategy practice that researches public attitudes to AI, adds to calls from a bipartisan parliamentary inquiry into AI urging Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to make changes to help AI companies who want to train their models in Australia.
Source: Australian voters back AI copyright changes — if creators get paid
The two competing pirate site-blocking bills that were introduced in Congress recently take different approached. While Rep. Darrell Issa’s ACPA targets VPNs and provides broad liability protections to Internet service providers, the bipartisan and bicameral DEFEND IP Act explicitly excludes VPNs, while covering more smaller ISPs. For more than a decade after the SOPA protests, pirate site blocking was a subject U.S. lawmakers preferred to avoid.
Source: Two U.S. Site-Blocking Bills Compete Over VPN Rules and ISP Liability
The majors and BMG have told the US Supreme Court that it should not let “one Fifth Circuit decision radically disrupt copyright worldwide”, as they push the justices to overturn a ruling won by songwriter Cyril Vetter. That January 12 ruling held that termination under US law returns an author’s rights across the world, and not only in the United States. The publishers say the industry is “actively negotiating deals running through 2072“, and that Vetter concedes foreign rights “represent a significant factor in those negotiations”.
Source: Majors tell SCOTUS not to let appeals court decision ‘radically disrupt copyright worldwide’
At the pearly gates, Dolly Parton, in a sparkling gown, stands arm in arm with Tim Curry, dressed as Dr. Frank-N-Furter. “I knew I chose the right plus one,” Parton says to God, who is standing at heaven’s reception desk. In the bottom right corner of the cartoon is the pen name “BLOPER,” the signature of New Yorker cartoonist Brendan Loper. But Loper didn’t draw the cartoon, or sign it. It was generated by ChatGPT and first posted to Facebook by a Dolly Parton fan.
Source: ChatGPT is adding real cartoonists’ signatures to fake New Yorker cartoons
Both the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild have issued statements praising an appeals court decision in the Thomson Reuters v. ROSS copyright lawsuit that found ROSS’s copying of Thomson Reuters Westlaw headnotes was not fair use. It was the first time an appeals court ruled that such unauthorized copying by an AI company was not protected by fair use.
Source: AAP, Authors Guild Applaud Decision in ROSS Copyright Infringement Case
The global artificial intelligence race is no longer defined solely by compute power and algorithmic breakthroughs. It is increasingly shaped by national copyright policies governing the ingestion of training data. As model builders race toward artificial general intelligence, they can run into a messy geopolitical question: how free are you to scrape the open web without paying the creators of the content behind it?
Source: Training in the Safe Zone: Building AI Models in Copyright Havens
Reddit is shutting two of the main ways outsiders pull data from the site. The company said in an announcement yesterday that RSS feeds will stop working on November 13, and public access to its API closes in March 2027. “In August, we shared plans to modernize Reddit’s infrastructure, build better mod tools, and make it harder for bad actors to scrape Reddit and abuse communities. Today, we have specifics on what’s changing, when, and how to plan ahead,” Reddit said.
Source: Reddit Is Killing RSS Feeds and Public API Access to Fight AI Scrapers
On Wednesday, the Tokyo District Court ruled that voices are a protected publicity right in the first ruling of its kind in the country. However, the court dismissed the request by voice actor Kenjiro Tsuda for TikTok to remove videos narrated using an AI-based voice that he claimed was based on his own. Tsuda is a well-known voice actor in the popular anime “Jujutsu Kaisen.”
Source: Japan Rules Voice Is A Protected Publicity Right in Landmark Ruling