Moonvalley, an AI research company that says it is developing “ethical” foundational AI video models trained exclusively on licensed content, announced $84 million in additional funding led by existing investor General Catalyst. The round includes strategic investments from CAA and Comcast Ventures, as well as AI cloud company CoreWeave.
Source: Comcast, CAA Invest in ‘Ethical’ AI Video Start-Up Moonvalley as Part of $84 Million Funding Round
Telling journalists they must use AI is not a business strategy. Partnering with AI companies is a business move, but becoming reliant on revenue from tech giants who are creating a machine that duplicates the work you’ve already created is not a smart or sustainable business move, and therefore it is not a smart business strategy.
Source: The Media’s Pivot to AI Is Not Real and Not Going to Work
The bond issuance is backed by the master recordings and compositions from artists such as Creed, R.E.M. and Phil Collins, American Banker reported, citing data from Kroll Bond Ratings Agency (KBRA). According to ratings agency Moody’s, the proceeds will be used to repay a bond issuance that Concord completed in 2022. At the time, it was described as “the largest asset-backed securitization offering of music rights in the industry to date.”
Source: Concord prepares to issue $1.75bn in bonds, in ABS transaction backed by 1 million music copyrights
A research paper commissioned by the European Parliament has called for an EU law to pay writers, musicians, and artists whose work has been used to train GenAI models. The study finds the current exception for text-and-data mining (TDM) in EU law “was not designed to accommodate the expressive and synthetic nature of generative AI training, and its application to such systems risks distorting the purpose and limits of EU copyright exceptions.”
Source: EU report says GenAI’s ‘fair use’ defense does not compute
A federal judge in New York has allowed a lawsuit to move forward from two voice-over artists alleging their voices were stolen by an AI voice startup. The judge dismissed artists Paul Skye Lehrman and Linnea Sage claims that their voices were subject to federal copyright. But claims from the artists of breach of contract and deceptive business practices, as well as separate copyright claims alleging that the voices were improperly used as part of the AI’s training data, will, however, move forward.
Source: Federal judge says voiceover artists AI lawsuit can move forward
A lawsuit, filed by several publishers in 2024, accused Google of not doing enough to prevent piracy while simultaneously profiting from it. A recent success for Google led to the dismissal of the publishers’ vicarious liability claim, leaving a claim for contributory infringement to be decided. In a letter to the court on Thursday, counsel for Google requested a stay, pending the Supreme Court’s decision in Cox vs. Sony, and a “potentially dispositive” impact on the case.
Source: Google Says SCOTUS Decision in Cox vs. Sony Will Impact Publishers’ Lawsuit * TorrentFreak
Copyright law—a byzantine world in which millions ride on whether ‘Ice Ice Baby’ sounds too much like ‘Under Pressure’—rarely has much to say about geopolitics. But two pivotal AI copyright court decisions last week, the first in a slew of prominent lawsuits, will have enormous implications for the U.S. competition with China for technological primacy.
Source: AI Copyright Wars Threaten U.S. Technological Primacy in the Face of Rising Chinese Competition
Sci-Hub has launched its own SCI token through which it hopes to unlock more paywalled research. The controversial shadow library, which is used by millions of researchers around the globe, sees this as the next step to decentralize science and reward knowledge sharing. Whether this pirate ‘tokenomics’ works in practice has yet to be seen.
Source: Sci-Hub’s Crypto Coin Aims to Power a New Era of ‘Open’ Science * TorrentFreak
Scraping activity has jumped 18% in the past year, according to Cloudflare, an internet services company. The outcome of the copyright fights and technical efforts to curb free scraping could have a seismic impact on the future of the media industry—and the internet at large. Publishers are essentially trying to fence off swaths of the web while AI companies argue that the material they are scraping is fair game.
Source: The AI Scraping Fight That Could Change the Future of the Web
Google and Microsoft have made significant changes in the ways they court publishers – partly driven by rising demand for sustainable ad inventory in programmatic buying and production, as well as automation, AI, competition and regulatory changes. Creative weight — also known as data volume — significantly impacts carbon emissions associated with ad delivery.
Source: MediaDailyNews: Google, Microsoft Push Changes To Support Publishers