Rights

AI vs. audio pirates: catching sophisticated copyright evasion with AI

Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks, a type of recurrent neural network, are adept at analyzing sequential data, making them ideal for detecting temporal manipulations in audio. Even transformer models, the technology behind advanced language AI like ChatGPT, are being applied to audio analysis, processing long sequences of audio data to identify complex patterns and relationships that might escape other systems.

Source: AI vs. audio pirates: catching sophisticated copyright evasion with AI

Tencent Music is ‘deploying advanced AI tools’ to crack down on infringement 

According to TME: “We believe AI should be a supportive tool rather than a substitute for musicians creating original works. We implement compliance assessments and continuous monitoring of AI products and operations to ensure that AI-generated musical content is properly licensed and musicians’ creative works are fully protected.”

Source: Tencent Music is ‘strategically deploying advanced AI tools’ to crack down on infringement amid the rise of AI-generated content

Adobe has a new tool to protect artists’ work from AI

As the engine powering the world’s digital artists, Adobe has a big responsibility to mitigate the rise of AI-driven deepfakes, misinformation, and content theft. In the first quarter of 2025, Adobe is launching its Content Authenticity web app in beta, allowing creators to apply content credentials to their work, certifying it as their own.

Source: Adobe has a new tool to protect artists’ work from AI

The Race to Block OpenAI’s Scraping Bots Is Slowing Down

It’s too soon to say how the spate of deals between AI companies and publishers will shake out. OpenAI has already scored one clear win, though: Its web crawlers aren’t getting blocked by top news outlets at the rate they once were. The generative AI boom sparked a gold rush for data—and a subsequent data-protection rush (for most news websites, anyway) in which publishers sought to block AI crawlers and prevent their work from becoming training data without consent.

Source: The Race to Block OpenAI’s Scraping Bots Is Slowing Down

This new AI answer engine plans to pay media companies for their content

Similar to Perplexity, ProRata’s answer engine will cite its sources, but takes a slightly different approach. Built on Meta’s Llama as its foundational large language model, ProRata’s search will only perform retrieval-augmented generation on content that it has licensed. ProRata’s answer engine also uses proprietary attribution algorithms designed to calculate how much any given publisher’s content contributed to an answer.

Source: This new AI answer engine plans to pay media companies for their content

Warner and Meta strike multi-year licensing deal covering Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp

Warner Music Group has become the latest major music company to strike a fresh multi-year licensing deal with Facebook parent company, Meta. The new agreement includes Meta properties Facebook and Instagram, plus Messenger, Horizon, and Threads. WMG’s new deal with Meta also includes, for the first time, the technology giant’s popular messaging app, WhatsApp.

Source: Warner and Meta strike multi-year licensing deal covering Instagram, Facebook and for the first time… WhatsApp

SCAPR Reports $1.05B in 2023 Performer Royalties Collections

The Societies’ Council for the Collective Management of Performers’ Rights (SCAPR), now counting as members 61 collective management organizations from 45 countries, just recently published its 2023 report. All told, the mentioned member CMOs – referring to 47 “ordinary members” and 14 “associated members,” the likes of the U.K.’s PPL among the former – are said to represent over one million performers.

Source: SCAPR Reports $1.05B in 2023 Performer Royalties Collections

Canadian Copyright Crisis: IFRRO Calls on Ottawa For Reform

The IFRRO general assembly this week has been comprised of 150 members from 80 nations, and from that plenary, the organization has issued a statement that calls the recommendations of Access Copyright and Copibec, an ”initiative intended “to restore a viable market for the reproduction of copyrighted works in the Canadian educational environment, in line with international copyright commitments.”

Source: Canadian Copyright Crisis: IFRRO Calls on Ottawa For Reform

Meta hit with new author copyright lawsuit over AI training

Novelist Christopher Farnsworth has filed a proposed class-action copyright lawsuit against Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab accusing the tech giant of misusing his books and others to train its Llama artificial-intelligence large language model. Farnsworth said in the lawsuit, opens new tab on Tuesday that Meta fed Llama, which powers its AI chatbots, thousands of pirated books to teach it how to respond to human prompts.

Source: Meta hit with new author copyright lawsuit over AI training

Pink Floyd Sells Music Rights to Sony for $400 Million

Despite decades of infighting and years of false starts, the members of Pink Floyd have agreed to sell music rights to Sony Music for $400 million. The deal apparently has finally concluded despite decades of ongoing infighting and bitter words between the bandmembers, notably chief songwriters Roger Waters and David Gilmour. The deal comprises recorded-music rights but not songwriting, which is held by the individual writers, as well as name-and-likeness, which includes merchandise, theatrical and similar rights.

Source: Pink Floyd Sells Music Rights to Sony for $400 Million

Get the latest RightsTech news and analysis delivered directly in your inbox every week
We respect your privacy.