Rights

Last week Spotify gave its premium subscribers in the UK and Australia access to up to 15 hours of audiobook content per month at no additional cost. Agents are optimistic that Spotify’s streaming deals with major publishers will help amplify authors and provide healthy competition to Amazon-owned Audible, but several have voiced concerns about how it may affect author income due to the lack of detail about the deals struck.

Source: Agents concerned about ‘lack of detail’ on Spotify streaming deals

In January, “Ocean’s Eleven” director Steven Soderbergh awarded Faus $100,000 to finish the film, from an on-chain fund established with Decentralized Pictures and designed to assist promising filmmakers open to non-traditional film financing methods. “The Quiet Maid” will have its world premiere next month in competition at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in Estonia. It will compete in the First Feature category.

Source: Steven Soderbergh-Backed, NFT-Funded Film Lands Global Sales Deal – Decrypt

Could there still be IP gold to be panned? The Circuit Group is a collaboration between music industry veterans from artist management companies Seven20 and AYITA, with a focus on intellectual property. The Circuit Group aims to acquire 50% ownership in artists’ IP portfolios and partner with them to build opportunities in a wealth of verticals within the music business, in addition to traditional artist management.

Source: Seven20 & AYITA Form IP-Focused ‘The Circuit Group’

The Supreme Court just recently denied the petition for writ of certiorari submitted by the plaintiffs in the marathon copyright battle. To recap the $30 million legal showdown, an array of publishers in 2015 sued William Sagan, who’d bought and then made available through a platform called Wolfgang’s Vault a number of classic concert recordings (including of The Who, The Rolling Stones, and The Grateful Dead).

Source: Supreme Court Denies Bid for Certiorari in Wolfgang’s Vault Suit

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to clarify the time period for which plaintiffs can recover damages over copyright claims in a case involving a Miami music producer who sued Warner Music’s Atlantic Records label after hip-hop artist Flo Rida made use of a 1980s song that he claims he owns. The justices took up an appeal by two music publishing companies – Warner Music’s Warner Chappell as well as Artist Publishing Group.

Source: US Supreme Court to hear Warner Music case on limits to copyright damages

It has been easy for bookspammers to release dozens of titles in a day using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) system, which enables authors to self-publish ebooks and printed books. Amazon could not say how many books it prevents from being published or how many were taken down. In August, Jane Friedman, who writes about publishing, forced it to remove five bogus titles in her name that appeared to be AI-generated.

Source: Authors shocked to find AI ripoffs of their books being sold on Amazon

Since Alice v. CLS Bank, the high likelihood of an AI invention being found to be directed to an abstract idea has created the worrisome possibility of precluding an entire field capable of generating worlds of foundational technology from patentability. Indeed, it is hard to fathom a world where things like the Star Trek computer, with its endless knowledge base and control capabilities, could be patent ineligible,

Source: What the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act Means for Artificial Intelligence Inventions

A clearer picture of how studios intend to incorporate artificial intelligence into the screenplay production apparatus is coming into view. The agreement requires writers to obtain consent if they want to use generative AI and allows studios to “reject a use of GAI that could adversely affect the copyrightability or exploitation of the work.”

Source: Hollywood’s AI Compromise: Writers Get Protection, Studios Aim for Copyright

The authors note that OpenAI’s detailed interpretation of fair use in an AI context is irrelevant, at least at this stage. Fair use is a defense that is typically not used to dismiss copyright infringement claims before they’re properly argued. “Fair use is an affirmative defense, and is inappropriate to resolve on a motion to dismiss,” the author’s said in their reply brief. Given that, OpenAI’s arguments regarding fair use are “wholly misplaced.”

Source: Authors: OpenAI’s Fair Use Argument in Copyright Dispute is Misplaced * TorrentFreak

The decision by U.S. Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas sets the stage for what could be one of the first trials related to the unauthorized use of data to train AI systems. Tech companies including Meta Platforms, Stability AI and Microsoft-backed OpenAI are also facing lawsuits from authors, visual artists and other copyright owners over the use of their work to train the companies’ generative AI software.

Source: Thomson Reuters AI copyright dispute must go to trial, judge says