Court filings made Friday in a closely watched copyright trial pitting The New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft invoked a wide range of material, including relevant copyright law, arts and sports. The briefs, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, largely boiled down to two questions: whether the publishers’ news articles were sufficiently “transformed” into an entirely new work by A.I., and whether A.I. produced content that “substituted” for news articles and harmed their value.
Source: Court Filings in A.I. Suit Invoke Copyright Law, Culture and Sports
A US federal judge has thrown out the copyright theory at the center of the lawsuit that accused Bad Bunny, Drake, and more than 150 other artists of copying the “dembow” rhythm used across reggaeton. Judge André Birotte Jr. ruled that the plaintiffs had failed to identify a single copyrighted work of their own that contains the combination of elements they are trying to protect. The order reverses the decision Birotte issued on July 1, which had left the protectability of the rhythm for a jury.
SOCAN has filed a Suno copyright lawsuit of its own, accusing the platform of unlawfully training on protected works and then generating infringing outputs. SOCAN submitted the straightforward complaint to Canada’s Federal Court today, moments after activist artist David Lowery as well as Latin label Gerencia 360 fired off distinct actions against Suno in the U.S. Despite the clear-cut differences between those plaintiffs and to some extent their precise claims, the suits touch on the same main points.
District Judge Analisa Torres has rejected the interlocutory appeal request, indicating in part that the “MLC has not met its burden to show that there is a ‘substantial ground for difference of opinion’ as to the Court’s dismissal order.” “The Court adheres to its opinion that the plain text of § 385.2 leaves no ambiguity as to whether Premium combines ‘one or more products or services’ having ‘more than token value’ with a subscription music streaming service,” Judge Torres wrote.
A routine John Doe lawsuit could become part of Strike 3 Holdings’ $446 million AI training case against Meta. The adult film producer wants to link the two lawsuits, arguing that a Reality Labs executive downloaded nearly 20,000 files at his home for work purposes, not for personal use. Meta counters that the alleged home downloads are not linked to the company.
Almost a day after the Justice Department filed paperwork in federal court backing 
In a lawsuit that The New York Times filed against OpenAI, the Trump administration has contributed a 20-page brief in defense of the ChatGPT maker’s unlicensed use of copyrighted material to train its LLMs. “The United States has a strong interest in continuing to develop a robust and competitive artificial intelligence industry that sets the standard for the practice and procedure of AI use globally… As such, it is critical for the United States to ‘retain global leadership in artificial intelligence,’” the brief reads
Some authors hoping to receive their share of Anthropic’s $1.5 billion copyright settlement said they received surprising emails this week — emails informing them that someone else was making a claim on their payments. Under the terms of the settlement, the authors will be paid $3,000 for each pirated work. If the book is still in print with a traditional publisher, the money will be split 50-50 between author and publisher. But writers have been posting on social media that publishers seem to be claiming more than their fair share of some payments.
Jason Isbell is suing AI music company Suno over the alleged commercial use of his identity. The six-time Grammy winner filed a proposed class action on Monday (August 31) in Boston federal court, alongside Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven frontman David Lowery, Texas blues musician Guy Forsyth, and Florida saxophonist Eduardo Calle. Interestingly, the 84-page lawsuit contains no copyright claim.
Over the last ten years, buying music became trendy. The logic was simple: recurring revenue, long duration, emotional resonance. Prices climbed. Multiples stretched. Everyone wanted to jump on the bandwagon. Then the market said enough. The collapse of the Hipgnosis Songs Fund looked, for a moment, like a verdict on music as an asset. It was not. It was a verdict on an over-leveraged fund. Content underneath it was just fine. Music is still the name of the game. What came next proved the point.