GEMA proposes licensing model for AI-generated music

GEMA, a German performing rights collection society and licensing body, has introduced a licensing model for AI providers, seeking to address the use of copyrighted music in AI training and the creation of AI-generated songs. GEMA proposes that authors should receive compensation beyond a one-time payment for training data. It suggests that such one-off payments may not sufficiently compensate authors given the potential revenues from AI-generated content.

Source: GEMA proposes licensing model for AI-generated music

Music Industry Funding Fell in Q3 ’24 Despite Some Positive Signs

Overall, Q3 2024’s funding was significantly beneath that delivered by Q3 2023, north of $2.56 billion across 30 rounds. The older period’s average round size was $85.43 million, in excess of three times more than the average for 2024’s third quarter. Despite the decrease, Q3 2024 didn’t lack encouraging funding takeaways, including the mentioned strong showing between mid-August and mid-September, TickPick’s noted quarter-billion-dollar raise, and others.

Source: Music Industry Funding Fell in Q3 ’24 Despite Some Positive Signs

Zuckerberg: creators, publishers ‘overestimate the value’ of their work for training AI

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says there are complex copyright questions around scraping data to train AI models, but he suggests the individual work of most creators isn’t valuable enough for it to matter. In an interview with The Verge deputy editor Alex Heath, Zuckerberg said Meta will likely strike “certain partnerships” for useful content. But if others demand payment, then — as it’s done with news outlets — the company would prefer to walk away.

Source: Mark Zuckerberg: creators and publishers ‘overestimate the value’ of their work for training AI

TikTok vs. Merlin: Licensing Impasse Looms for Indie Collective

A letter sent from Merlin to its members states TikTok has walked away from negotiations with the collective in favor of individual deals. “TikTok has asked us for an ‘orderly transition’ to do direct deals with those members they deem worthy. As you know, Merlin was founded to stand up for and champion its members. We will not support an approach that devalues our community,” the letter continues.

Source: TikTok vs. Merlin: Licensing Impasse Looms for Indie Collective

AI crawlers are hammering sites and nearly taking them offline

Kyle Wiens recognized something was wrong in July when his staff at iFixit began receiving alerts about high traffic on their cellphones. They also were able to identify what had caused the issue: It turned out to be a web crawler sent out into the world by Anthropic, makers of the Claude chatbot, to try and gather training data.

Source: AI crawlers are hammering sites and nearly taking them offline

U.S. Court Orders LibGen to Pay $30m to Publishers, Issues Broad Injunction

A New York federal court has ordered the operators of shadow library LibGen to pay $30 million in copyright infringement damages. The default judgment comes with a broad injunction that affects third-party services including domain registries, browser extensions, CDN providers, IPFS gateways, advertisers, and more. These parties should stop facilitating access to the pirate site.

Source: U.S. Court Orders LibGen to Pay $30m to Publishers, Issues Broad Injunction * TorrentFreak

Generative AI & Licensing: A Special Report

To date, more than two dozen content owner deals with AI developers have been publicly confirmed, according to VIP+ research. A diverse range of publisher types are now engaged in licensing, with dealmaking rampant among news publishers, stock image companies and platforms such as Reddit and Stack Overflow. Yet the licensing market for generative AI is coming to fruition in a contentious and uncertain legal environment.

Source: Generative AI & Licensing: A Special Report

An author has questions on his publisher’s AI deal (opinion)

Informa, the academic publishing powerhouse and parent company of Routledge and Taylor & Francis, recently announced a deal with Microsoft that will feed a massive body of scholarly work to a generative AI system. If Informa’s decision portends a wave of similar deals between scholarly publishers and generative AI companies, the troubling precedent this sets could result in significant changes to the nature of academic publishing.

Source: An author has questions on his publisher’s AI deal (opinion)

Court Rules Against Photographer Who Sued AI Dataset for Copyright Theft

A German court has ruled against a photographer who sued the AI image dataset company LAION in a case that could have big implications. The dispute between the two parties wound up in the Hamburg Regional Court where on Friday the court ruled that LAION benefited from the exception of copyright infringement under Section 60(d) of Germany copyright law. A proviso that allows privileged research organizations to reproduce works even if granted an opt-out by the author of the work,

Source: Court Rules Against Photographer Who Sued AI Dataset for Copyright Theft

European Commission appoints 13 experts to draft AI Code 

The European Commission has today announced the list of independent experts from the EU, US and Canada tasked to lead work on drafting a Code of Practice on General Purpose Artificial Intelligence, which includes language models such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini. The EU’s AI Act, which entered into force last month – provides stringent rules for providers of GPAI models, which will become effective in August 2025.

Source: European Commission appoints 13 experts to draft AI Code 

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