A new tool for copyright holders can show if their work is in AI training data; MIT Technology Review, July 25, 2024

• Melissa Heikkiläarchive page

, MIT Technology Review; A new tool for copyright holders can show if their work is in AI training data

"Since the beginning of the generative AI boom, content creators have argued that their work has been scraped into AI models without their consent. But until now, it has been difficult to know whether specific text has actually been used in a training data set. 

Now they have a new way to prove it: “copyright traps” developed by a team at Imperial College London, pieces of hidden text that allow writers and publishers to subtly mark their work in order to later detect whether it has been used in AI models or not. The idea is similar to traps that have been used by copyright holders throughout history—strategies like including fake locations on a map or fake words in a dictionary. 

These AI copyright traps tap into one of the biggest fights in AI. A number of publishers and writers are in the middle of litigation against tech companies, claiming their intellectual property has been scraped into AI training data sets without their permission. The New York Times’ ongoing case against OpenAI is probably the most high-profile of these.  

The code to generate and detect traps is currently available on GitHub, but the team also intends to build a tool that allows people to generate and insert copyright traps themselves." 

Her Music Fell Into Obscurity. Now It’s Back at the Philharmonic.; The New York Times, November 20, 2023

 Garrett Schumann, The New York Times; Her Music Fell Into Obscurity. Now It’s Back at the Philharmonic.

"When Perry died, she had no children and only a few published works. Although scholars have identified about 100 of her manuscripts and scores, dozens cannot be performed or recorded because there is no established copyright holder. As Christopher Wilkins, the music director of the Akron Symphony, said, “all the work is protected; it just hasn’t been licensed, and can’t be until whoever controls it negotiates that.”

Wilkins first found Perry’s compositions in 2020, and marveled at what he saw. She, he said, “may be the most accomplished and celebrated composer ever to emerge from Akron.” He then asked the soprano and scholar Louise Toppin, who leads the African Diaspora Music Project, to help him explore Perry’s output and edit some of her manuscripts...

The Akron Symphony has also engaged a local lawyer to help resolve the copyright ambiguities that ensnare many of Perry’s compositions — a barrier to overcome for those interested in her music, beyond historical practices of exclusion among American institutions."

How a treaty signed in Marrakesh made the Library of Congress more accessible; The Washington Post, February 15, 2022

Danny Freedman, The Washington Post ; How a treaty signed in Marrakesh made the Library of Congress more accessible

"U.S. law already allowed the NLS and authorized nonprofits to create accessible books without permission from the copyright holder. But the treaty extends that to music and scripts, and creates the crucial ability to pool resources with the world. For the NLS to produce its own version of a Nietzsche book in Spanish might’ve taken six months to professionally narrate, edit and build in the descriptive and navigational features that differentiate accessible audio from commercial audiobooks and those made with text-to-speech software. Instead, Corlett-Rivera was able to pluck a recording from a participating library in Spain."

Twitter disables video retweeted by Donald Trump over copyright complaint; The Guardian, July 19, 2020

Reuters via The Guardian; Twitter disables video retweeted by Donald Trump over copyright complaint

"Twitter has disabled a campaign-style video retweeted by Donald Trump, citing a copyright complaint.

The video, which included music from the group Linkin Park, disappeared from the president’s Twitter feed late Saturday with the notification: “This media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner.”

Twitter removed the video, which Trump had retweeted from the White House social media director, Dan Scavino, after it received a Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice from Machine Shop Entertainment, according to a notice posted on the Lumen Database which collects requests for removal of online materials."

The Copyright Lawsuit in Tiger King Is an Outrage; Slate, May 7, 2020

Joshua Lamel, Slate; The Copyright Lawsuit in Tiger King Is an Outrage

"Copyright is the perfect vehicle for SLAPP suits. First of all, copyright is a government-granted, exclusive right to speech. There is no better way to prevent someone from publicly criticizing you than to use copyright law. Copyright lawsuits are expensive and place enormous costs on defendants. Fair use has to be raised once you are sued, so defendants will likely have to spend more. The potential damages are extreme: For every violation of a copyright, you can get $150,000 in statutory damages. Additionally, copyright law has injunctive relief—you can actually stop the speech from happening.

One would think that Congress would recognize this and specifically include copyright in federal anti-SLAPP efforts. But that is not happening anytime soon. Instead, thanks to their lobbying and fundraising, copyright holders have been successful in convincing senior members of Congress in both parties to exclude copyright. These members have told federal anti-SLAPP advocates that they need to be willing to give up copyright for a chance of being successful. There is not a single good policy argument to exclude copyright. Copyright litigation abuse is exactly what anti-SLAPP legislation should be designed to prevent. This type of abuse is the reason we need a federal fix.

In my dream world, the saturation of Joe Exotic’s story will help everyday Americans understand the relevance of copyright law in our daily lives—maybe even spur federal lawmakers to introduce and pass anti-SLAPP law without a special carve-out for copyright."

What the EU’s copyright overhaul means — and what might change for big tech; NiemanLab, Nieman Foundation at Harvard, April 22, 2019

Marcello Rossi, NiemanLab, Nieman Foundation at Harvard; What the EU’s copyright overhaul means — and what might change for big tech

"The activity indeed now moves to the member states. Each of the 28 countries in the EU now has two years to transpose it into its own national laws. Until we see how those laws shake out, especially in countries with struggles over press and internet freedom, both sides of the debate will likely have plenty of room to continue arguing their sides — that it marks a groundbreaking step toward a more balanced, fair internet, or that it will result in a set of legal ambiguities that threaten the freedom of the web."