An award-winning image created by artist Jason M. Allen with the generative AI platform Midjourney is the latest to be denied copyright protection by the US Copyright Office. The office said on Tuesday, September 5, that Allen’s image, the science fiction-themed “Theatre D’opera Spatial,” was not entitled to copyright protection due to the AI-generated elements of the work.
Source: US Copyright Office Rejects Yet Another AI-Generated Image
Downtown Music Holdings-owned Songtrust faced serious and extended suspensions from major rights societies PRS for Music, SACEM, and the collective ICE over a rash of fraudulent and problematic accounts, multiple sources relay. The suspensions, which robbed member songwriters and rightsholders of substantial royalties, or at least substantially delayed their delivery, appeared to have started in 2021 and were only resolved after substantial client purges and revamped processes were implemented.
Source: Songtrust Suspended by PRS, SACEM, ICE Over Fraudulent Accounts
Source: Grammys Intelligently Ban Artificial Intelligence From Awards Eligibility
Story Protocol, a network that’s billed as an open-source solution for creators and intellectual property in an increasingly digital age, announced its launch on Wednesday with over $54 million in funding led by Andreessen Horowitz. “In a world of total abundance catalyzed by generative AI, blockchain technology presents the perfect solution for transparent provenance tracking and fair attribution,” said Story Protocol Co-Founder Seung Yoon Lee in a press release.
Source: Story Protocol Launches IP Ownership Network with $54 Million in Funding – Decrypt
Today’s announcement was notable not only for Deezer officially canoodling with UMG’s preferred model, but because, for the first time – following months of rumors – we got a solid idea of what ‘user-centric’ actually is, and may become. To summarize, as we stand, Deezer’s version of the ‘artist-centric’ royalty model involves three key elements:
After the decision in March, the litigants in the Internet Archive suit began preparing for an appeal. But in the final order filed on August 11, Judge Koeltl delivered a shock ruling that fell far short of granting the publishers the remedies they’d originally sought. For now, the Open Library will have to stop loaning only those ebooks for which the publishers are offering their own “competing” ebooks for license.
Source: A Book Is a Book Is a Book—Except When It’s an e-Book
Deezer and UMG have announced the launch of what they call the “first comprehensive artist-centric streaming model”, designed, according to the companies “to better reward the artists, and the music that fans value the most”. According to the Financial Times the model is expected by UMG and Deezer to “lift payouts to professional artists by 10 per cent”.
Books3 started as a passion project by a Midwestern guy going through a weird time. “I poured my soul into the work,” he says. He saw it as aligned with the open source movement, a way to democratize access to the kind of data sets OpenAI was already using. Copyright activists are on a mission to wipe the popular generative AI training set from the internet. Success could alter the industry—and who controls it.
The letter from the Publishers Association, which represents publishers of digital and print books as well as research journals and educational content, asks Rishi Sunak to make clear at the November summit that intellectual property law must be respected when AI systems absorb content produced by the UK’s creative industries.
Source: UK publishers urge Sunak to protect works ingested by AI models
The Copyright Office has decided against revisiting the Section 115 compulsory license in a new study, pointing to changes made via the MMA. “As the changes made to the license through the MMA have been effective only for the past two and a half years,” reads the relevant portion of the message, “the Office believes that it would be premature at this time to engage in a new study of the section 115 license.”
Source: Copyright Office Declines Section 115 Compulsory License Reform