A comprehensive 112-page study conducted jointly by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the U.S. Copyright Office has determined that existing intellectual property laws are sufficient to address concerns regarding copyright and trademark infringement related to non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Rights
Why Are Songs by Some UMG Artists Available on TikTok, Despite Ban?
The standoff between Universal Music Group and TikTok over royalty payments and AI policies has resulted in a near-complete blackout of all music owned, distributed and published by the company on the platform — the videos are still there, but the music is muted. Yet new songs by UMG artists, including Ariana Grande, Camila Cabello and Niall Horan could be found on TikTok at the time of this article’s publication.
European Union Passes ‘World First’ AI Legislation
Sweeping new laws regulating the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in Europe, including controls around the use of copyrighted [works], have been approved by the European Parliament, following fierce lobbying from both the tech and music communities. Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) voted in favor of the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act by a clear majority of 523 votes for, 46 against and 49 abstentions.
Source: European Union Passes ‘World First’ AI Legislation That Would Safeguard Copyrighted Music
Australian news media could seek payment from Meta for content used to train AI
When Meta announced last week that it would not sign new deals to pay for news in Australia for use on Facebook, it downplayed the value of news to its services, stating that just 3% of Facebook usage in Australia was related to news. There are now calls to designate Meta under the news media bargaining code, which would force the company to negotiate with news media publishers and pay for news content on its platforms.
Source: Australian news media could seek payment from Meta for content used to train AI
Rashida Tlaib Introduces New Bill to Fix Streaming Royalties
The United Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW) are celebrating the introduction of the Living Wage for Musicians Act, led by Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Jamaal Bowman, to Congress. The bill, shared with Digital Music News on Wednesday (March 6th), would create a new streaming royalty and help ensure that artists and musicians can build sustainable careers in the age of streaming.
Source: Rashida Tlaib Introduces New Bill to Fix Streaming Royalties
Midjourney Accuses Stability AI of Image Theft, Bans Its Employees
While DALL-E developer OpenAI is busy fighting with Elon Musk, the creators of two other notable image generation AIs, Midjourney and Stability AI, seem to have sparked a beef of their own over the most ironic thing imaginable, considering the nature of the companies involved – image theft. It is claimed that employees from Stability AI infiltrated Midjourney’s database and stole all prompt and image pairs, an action that also caused a 24-hour outage.
Source: Midjourney Accuses Stability AI of Image Theft, Bans Its Employees
AIMP Statement on TikTok Music Licensing
The statement comes in the face of multiple publishers in the industry withdrawing their catalogs from the short-form video platform and denying the renewal of a licensing deal. “Whether or not indie publishers are provided with the opportunity to continue with the current license model or not, there are a few issues that need to be addressed,” the statement begins.
National Music Publishers Assn. Does Not Plan to Renew TikTok License
The standoff between TikTok and Universal took a turn when the National Music Publishers Assn., which reps many indies, said it does not plan to renew. If more publishers join in — the two other major companies, Sony and Warner Chappell, have not yet done so — it would mean more music will vanish from the platform and more artists and songwriters will see their livelihoods impacted.
Researchers tested leading AI models for copyright infringement. GPT-4 performed worst
Patronus AI on Wednesday released research showcasing how often leading AI models produce copyrighted content. “We pretty much found copyrighted content across the board, across all models that we evaluated, whether it’s open source or closed source,” Rebecca Qian, Patronus AI’s cofounder and CTO, said. “Perhaps what was surprising is that we found that OpenAI’s GPT-4 produced copyrighted content on 44% of prompts that we constructed.”
Music royalties trading platform JKBX launches with approval from the SEC
JKBX has announced that it has received qualification from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its assets. The result: as of this week, investors – including consumers aka ‘retail investors’ – can legally purchase shares in the royalty streams of hits via JKBX.com. The JKBX platform soft-launched last year, but while awaiting SEC qualification, its users could only ‘reserve’ (rather than outright buy) these royalty shares.
Source: Music royalties trading platform JKBX launches – with regulatory approval from the SEC