While the newspapers’ publishers have spent billions of dollars to send “real people to real places to report on real events in the real world,” the two tech firms are “purloining” the papers’ reporting without compensation “to create products that provide news and information plagiarized and stolen,” according to the lawsuit in federal court.
Source: Mercury News and other papers sue Microsoft, OpenAI over the new artificial intelligence
Google has been hit with a new copyright lawsuit in California federal court by a group of visual artists who claimed the Alphabet opens new tab unit used their work without permission to train Imagen, its artificial-intelligence powered image generator. The case is one of many potential landmark lawsuits brought by copyright owners against tech companies including Microsoft, OpenAI and Meta over the data used to train their generative AI systems.
Earlier this month, US publishing body the NMPA lobbed some brickbats at Spotify over its new music and audiobooks bundle, which (under the current US royalty rates agreement) would generate lower mechanical royalties for publishers. Now another body, the Association of Independent Music Publishers (AIMP) has backed the NMPA’s stance.
Source: Indie publishing body AIMP criticises Spotify bundle strategy
The Financial Times has struck a deal with the ChatGPT developer OpenAI that allows its content to be used in training artificial intelligence systems. The FT will receive an undisclosed payment as part of the deal, which is the latest to be agreed between OpenAI and news publishers.
Source: OpenAI to use FT journalism to train artificial intelligence systems
The allegation emerges from a complaint [PDF] accusing the tech and retail mega-corp of demoting, and then dismissing, a former high-flying AI scientist after it discovered she was pregnant. As well as alleging sexism and discrimination against her, Ghaderi also accuses the tech giant of singling her out because she complained when Amazon allegedly breached its own rules against copyright infringement when it came to AI research.
Source: Ex-Amazon AI exec claims she was asked to ignore IP law
The Internet Archive is doubling down on its position that its digital lending library service operates under the bounds of fair use. Major publishers assert that digitizing books without appropriate licensing amounts to infringement but IA counters that the practice is in the public interest. It also fits copyright’s ultimate purpose; to promote the broad public availability of literature and other arts.
Source: There’s More to Copyright Than Financial Incentives, Internet Archive Argues in Court * TorrentFreak
As music IP owners continue to clash with AI behemoths over what constitutes fair use, Soundtrack Loops’ latest expansion — specifically with its OneStop Audio Library for AI training — aims to remove copyright conflict from the picture entirely. The company believes that in the face of rampant litigation and raging copyright wars, its latest release is simply the right path for both developers and rights holders.
Source: Soundtrack Loops Expands From General Use to AI Licensing
California politicians are advancing a bill that would force Google and Meta — which owns Facebook and Instagram — to pay news publishers each time they display pieces of their articles or show links to them in search results or on social media. The companies are lobbying furiously to block it, saying the law would enact a “link tax” and upend the free flow of information online.
Source: California wants Big Tech to pay for news. Google is fighting back.
Concord launched a USD $1.511 billion bid for the UK-listed company’s assets, at $1.25 per share. That bid very slightly topped a recent $1.50 billion takeover proposal from Blackstone, which valued HSF at $1.24 per share. Today (April 25), Blackstone issued a terse-but-fascinating comment to the markets, and specifically to HSF shareholders, in the wake of Concord’s new offer.
Jeff Price, the founder and CEO of global publishing administrator Word Collections, has released an article providing the results of auditing the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) using the MLC’s own publically available data. The results, according to Price, reveal that since the organization’s inception on January 1, 2021, the MLC has not paid out $600 million, or over 25%, of the mechanical royalties it has received from Apple, Amazon, Spotify, Pandora, YouTube Music, and other digital services.
Source: Word Collections says 25% of MLC Collection Isn’t Distributed