Penguin Random House books now explicitly say ‘no’ to AI training; The Verge, October 18, 2024

Emma Roth , The Verge; Penguin Random House books now explicitly say ‘no’ to AI training

"Book publisher Penguin Random House is putting its stance on AI training in print. The standard copyright page on both new and reprinted books will now say, “No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems,” according to a report from The Bookseller spotted by Gizmodo. 

The clause also notes that Penguin Random House “expressly reserves this work from the text and data mining exception” in line with the European Union’s laws. The Bookseller says that Penguin Random House appears to be the first major publisher to account for AI on its copyright page. 

What gets printed on that page might be a warning shot, but it also has little to do with actual copyright law. The amended page is sort of like Penguin Random House’s version of a robots.txt file, which websites will sometimes use to ask AI companies and others not to scrape their content. But robots.txt isn’t a legal mechanism; it’s a voluntarily-adopted norm across the web. Copyright protections exist regardless of whether the copyright page is slipped into the front of the book, and fair use and other defenses (if applicable!) also exist even if the rights holder says they do not."

 Annelise Gilbert , Bloomberg Law; AI Training Study to Come This Year, Copyright Office Says

"The Copyright Office’s report on the legal implications of training artificial intelligence models on copyrighted works is still expected to publish by the end of 2024, the office’s director told lawmakers.

Director Shira Perlmutter on Wednesday said the office aims to complete the remaining two sections of its three-part AI report in the next two months—one on the copyrightability of generative AI output and the other about liability, licensing, and fair use in regards to AI training on protected works."

Former OpenAI Researcher Says the Company Broke Copyright Law; The New York Times, October 23, 2024

Cade Metz, The New York Times; Former OpenAI Researcher Says the Company Broke Copyright Law

"Mr. Balaji believes the threats are more immediate. ChatGPT and other chatbots, he said, are destroying the commercial viability of the individuals, businesses and internet services that created the digital data used to train these A.I. systems.

“This is not a sustainable model for the internet ecosystem as a whole,” he told The Times."

Microsoft boss urges rethink of copyright laws for AI; The Times, October 21, 2024

 Katie Prescott, The Times; Microsoft boss urges rethink of copyright laws for AI

"The boss of Microsoft has called for a rethink of copyright laws so that tech giants are able to train artificial intelligence models without risk of infringing intellectual property rights.

Satya Nadella, chief executive of the technology multinational, praised Japan’s more flexible copyright laws and said that governments need to develop a new legal framework to define “fair use” of material, which allows people in certain situations to use intellectual property without permission.

Nadella, 57, said governments needed to iron out the rules. “What are the bounds for copyright, which obviously have to be protected? What’s fair use?” he said. “For any society to move forward, you need to know what is fair use.”"

Courts Agree That No One Should Have a Monopoly Over the Law. Congress Shouldn’t Change That; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), October 16, 2024

  CORYNNE MCSHERRY, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); Courts Agree That No One Should Have a Monopoly Over the Law. Congress Shouldn’t Change That

"For more than a decade, giant standards development organizations (SDOs) have been fighting in courts around the country, trying use copyright law to control access to other laws. They claim that that they own the copyright in the text of some of the most important regulations in the country – the codes that protect product, building and environmental safety--and that they have the right to control access to those laws. And they keep losing because, it turns out, from New York, to Missouri, to the District of Columbia, judges understand that this is an absurd and undemocratic proposition. 

They suffered their latest defeat in Pennsylvania, where  a district court held that UpCodes, a company that has created a database of building codes – like the National Electrical Code--can include codes incorporated by reference into law. ASTM, a private organization that coordinated the development of some of those codes, insists that it retains copyright in them even after they have been adopted into law. Some courts, including the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, have rejected that theory outright, holding that standards lose copyright protection when they are incorporated into law. Others, like the DC Circuit Court of Appeals in a case EFF defended on behalf of Public.Resource.Org, have held that whether or not the legal status of the standards changes once they are incorporated into law, posting them online is a lawful fair use. 

In this case, ASTM v. UpCodes, the court followed the latter path. Relying in large part on the DC Circuit’s decision, as well as an amicus brief EFF filed in support of UpCodes, the court held that providing access to the law (for free or subject to a subscription for “premium” access) was a lawful fair use. A key theme to the ruling is the public interest in accessing law:"

Trump’s other legal problem: Copyright infringement claims; The Washington Post, September 7, 2024

 

Herb Scribner

 and 

Janay Kingsberry

 The Washington Post; Trump’s other legal problem: Copyright infringement claims

"Music industry experts and copyright law attorneys say the cases, as well as Trump’s decision to continue playing certain songs despite artists’ requests that he desist, underscore the complex legalities of copyright infringement in today’s digital, streaming and licensing era — and could set an important precedent on the of use of popular music in political campaigns."

The Internet Archive Loses Its Appeal of a Major Copyright Case; Wired, September 4, 2024

 Kate Knibbs, Wired; The Internet Archive Loses Its Appeal of a Major Copyright Case

"THE INTERNET ARCHIVE has lost a major legal battle—in a decision that could have a significant impact on the future of internet history. Today, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled against the long-running digital archive, upholding an earlier ruling in Hachette v. Internet Archive that found that one of the Internet Archive’s book digitization projects violated copyright law.

Notably, the appeals court’s ruling rejects the Internet Archive’s argument that its lending practices were shielded by the fair use doctrine, which permits for copyright infringement in certain circumstances, calling it “unpersuasive.”"

OpenAI Pushes Prompt-Hacking Defense to Deflect Copyright Claims; Bloomberg Law, August 29, 2024

 Annelise Gilbert, Bloomberg Law; OpenAI Pushes Prompt-Hacking Defense to Deflect Copyright Claims

"Diverting attention to hacking claims or how many tries it took to obtain exemplary outputs, however, avoids addressing most publishers’ primary allegation: AI tools illegally trained on copyrighted works."

ABC, Kimmel Defeat George Santos Cameo Video Copyright Suit; Bloomberg Law, August 19, 2024

 Kyle Jahner , Bloomberg Law; ABC, Kimmel Defeat George Santos Cameo Video Copyright Suit

"Jimmy Kimmel and ABC defeated former Rep. George Santos’ copyright lawsuit as a New York federal court found use of his Cameo videos on television constituted fair use."

Authors sue Claude AI chatbot creator Anthropic for copyright infringement; AP, August 19, 2024

 MATT O’BRIEN, AP; Authors sue Claude AI chatbot creator Anthropic for copyright infringement

"A group of authors is suing artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, alleging it committed “large-scale theft” in training its popular chatbot Claude on pirated copies of copyrighted books.

While similar lawsuits have piled up for more than a year against competitor OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, this is the first from writers to target Anthropic and its Claude chatbot.

The smaller San Francisco-based company — founded by ex-OpenAI leaders — has marketed itself as the more responsible and safety-focused developer of generative AI models that can compose emails, summarize documents and interact with people in a natural way...

The lawsuit was brought by a trio of writers — Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson — who are seeking to represent a class of similarly situated authors of fiction and nonfiction...

What links all the cases is the claim that tech companies ingested huge troves of human writings to train AI chatbots to produce human-like passages of text, without getting permission or compensating the people who wrote the original works. The legal challenges are coming not just from writers but visual artists, music labels and other creators who allege that generative AI profits have been built on misappropriation...

But the lawsuit against Anthropic accuses it of using a dataset called The Pile that included a trove of pirated books. It also disputes the idea that AI systems are learning the way humans do."

Artists Score Major Win in Copyright Case Against AI Art Generators; The Hollywood Reporter, August 13, 2024

 Winston Cho, The Hollywood Reporter; Artists Score Major Win in Copyright Case Against AI Art Generators

"Artists suing generative artificial intelligence art generators have cleared a major hurdle in a first-of-its-kind lawsuit over the uncompensated and unauthorized use of billions of images downloaded from the internet to train AI systems, with a federal judge allowing key claims to move forward.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick on Monday advanced all copyright infringement and trademark claims in a pivotal win for artists. He found that Stable Diffusion, Stability’s AI tool that can create hyperrealistic images in response to a prompt of just a few words, may have been “built to a significant extent on copyrighted works” and created with the intent to “facilitate” infringement. The order could entangle in the litigation any AI company that incorporated the model into its products."

Pueblo artist seeking copyright protection for AI-generated work; The Gazette, August 8, 2024

O'Dell Isaac , The Gazette; Pueblo artist seeking copyright protection for AI-generated work

"“We’re done with the Copyright Office,” he said. “Now we’re going into the court system.”

Allen said he believes his case raises two essential questions: What is art? And if a piece doesn’t belong to the artist, whom does it belong to?

Tara Thomas, director of the Bemis School of Arts at Colorado College, said the answers may not be clear-cut.

“There was a similar debate at the beginning of photography,” Thomas said. "Was it the camera, or was it the person taking the photos? Is the camera the artmaker, or is it a tool?”

Allen said it took more than two decades for photography to gain acceptance as an art form.

“We’re at a similar place in AI art,” he said. 

“Right now, there is a massive stigma surrounding AI, far more so than there was with photography, so the challenge is much steeper. It is that very stigma that is contributing to the stifling of innovation. Why would anybody want to incorporate AI art into their workflow if they knew they couldn’t protect their work?”"

Music labels' AI lawsuits create copyright puzzle for courts; Reuters, August 4, 2024

 Blake Brittain, Reuters; Music labels' AI lawsuits create copyright puzzle for courts

"Suno and Udio pointed to past public statements defending their technology when asked for comment for this story. They filed their initial responses in court on Thursday, denying any copyright violations and arguing that the lawsuits were attempts to stifle smaller competitors. They compared the labels' protests to past industry concerns about synthesizers, drum machines and other innovations replacing human musicians...

The labels' claims echo allegations by novelists, news outlets, music publishers and others in high-profile copyright lawsuits over chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude that use generative AI to create text. Those lawsuits are still pending and in their early stages.

Both sets of cases pose novel questions for the courts, including whether the law should make exceptions for AI's use of copyrighted material to create something new...

"Music copyright has always been a messy universe," said Julie Albert, an intellectual property partner at law firm Baker Botts in New York who is tracking the new cases. And even without that complication, Albert said fast-evolving AI technology is creating new uncertainty at every level of copyright law.

WHOSE FAIR USE?

The intricacies of music may matter less in the end if, as many expect, the AI cases boil down to a "fair use" defense against infringement claims - another area of U.S. copyright law filled with open questions."

Religious education group sues Fort Wayne man over copyright claims; The Journal Gazette, July 8, 2024

 Ashley Sloboda  , The Journal Gazette; Religious education group sues Fort Wayne man over copyright claims

"LifeWise claims in its lawsuit that Parrish signed up online to volunteer with the hope of publishing information that might damage the organization’s reputation and prompt parents to oppose LifeWise Academy chapters in their communities.

Parrish accessed LifeWise’s information storage systems, downloaded internal documents and posted them along with the LifeWise curriculum on his website, parentsagainstlifewise.online, according to the lawsuit. It said Parrish also posted links to the curriculum on the Facebook group.

“He improperly obtained our entire copyright protected curriculum, and he posted to his website without our permission,” LifeWise said in a statement Monday.

LifeWise tried to get Parrish to voluntarily remove its curriculum, but the complaint said the organization’s efforts – including an attorney’s cease-and-desist letter and social media messages the chief operating officer sent him – were unsuccessful.

The lawsuit said Parrish responded to the letter with a meme stating, “It’s called fair use (expletive).”

LifeWise disagrees. In its statement, the organization said its curriculum is licensed through a publisher called LifeWay, and anyone is welcome to purchase the LifeWay curriculum through its website.

“Posting the entire curriculum is not ‘fair use,’ and we are confident that the judge will agree,” LifeWise said Monday."

Record labels sue AI music startups for copyright infringement; WBUR Here & Now, July 8, 2024

  WBUR Here & Now; Record labels sue AI music startups for copyright infringement

"Major record labels including Sony, Universal Music Group and Warner are suing two music startups that use artificial intelligence. The labels say Suno and Udio rely on mass copyright infringement, echoing similar complaints from authors, publishers and artists who argue that generative AI infringes on copyright.

Here & Now's Lisa Mullins discusses the cases with Ina Fried, chief technology correspondent for Axios."

Internet Archive forced to remove 500,000 books after publishers’ court win; Ars Technica, June 21, 2024

 ASHLEY BELANGER, Ars Technica; Internet Archive forced to remove 500,000 books after publishers’ court win

"As a result of book publishers successfully suing the Internet Archive (IA) last year, the free online library that strives to keep growing online access to books recently shrank by about 500,000 titles.

IA reported in a blog post this month that publishers abruptly forcing these takedowns triggered a "devastating loss" for readers who depend on IA to access books that are otherwise impossible or difficult to access.

To restore access, IA is now appealing, hoping to reverse the prior court's decision by convincing the US Court of Appeals in the Second Circuit that IA's controlled digital lending of its physical books should be considered fair use under copyright law."

Microsoft’s AI boss thinks it’s perfectly OK to steal content if it’s on the open web; The Verge, June 28, 2024

  Sean Hollister, The Verge; Microsoft’s AI boss thinks it’s perfectly OK to steal content if it’s on the open web

"Microsoft AI boss Mustafa Suleyman incorrectly believes that the moment you publish anything on the open web, it becomes “freeware” that anyone can freely copy and use. 

When CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin asked him whether “AI companies have effectively stolen the world’s IP,” he said:

I think that with respect to content that’s already on the open web, the social contract of that content since the ‘90s has been that it is fair use. Anyone can copy it, recreate with it, reproduce with it. That has been “freeware,” if you like, that’s been the understanding...

I am not a lawyer, but even I can tell you that the moment you create a work, it’s automatically protected by copyright in the US." 

How to Fix “AI’s Original Sin”; O'Reilly, June 18, 2024

  Tim O’Reilly, O'Reilly; How to Fix “AI’s Original Sin”

"In conversation with reporter Cade Metz, who broke the story, on the New York Times podcast The Daily, host Michael Barbaro called copyright violation “AI’s Original Sin.”

At the very least, copyright appears to be one of the major fronts so far in the war over who gets to profit from generative AI. It’s not at all clear yet who is on the right side of the law. In the remarkable essay “Talkin’ ’Bout AI Generation: Copyright and the Generative-AI Supply Chain,” Cornell’s Katherine Lee and A. Feder Cooper and James Grimmelmann of Microsoft Research and Yale note:

Copyright law is notoriously complicated, and generative-AI systems manage to touch on a great many corners of it. They raise issues of authorship, similarity, direct and indirect liability, fair use, and licensing, among much else. These issues cannot be analyzed in isolation, because there are connections everywhere. Whether the output of a generative AI system is fair use can depend on how its training datasets were assembled. Whether the creator of a generative-AI system is secondarily liable can depend on the prompts that its users supply.

But it seems less important to get into the fine points of copyright law and arguments over liability for infringement, and instead to explore the political economy of copyrighted content in the emerging world of AI services: Who will get what, and why?"

Big Tech Launches Campaign to Defend AI Use; The Hollywood Reporter, June 6, 2024

 Winston Cho , The Hollywood Reporter; Big Tech Launches Campaign to Defend AI Use

"Chamber of Progress, a tech industry coalition whose members include Amazon, Apple and Meta, is launching a campaign to defend the legality of using copyrighted works to train artificial intelligence systems.

The group says the campaign, called “Generate and Create” and unveiled on Thursday, will aim to highlight “how artists use generative AI to enhance their creative output” and “showcase how AI lowers barriers for producing art” as part of an initiative to “defend the longstanding legal principle of fair use under copyright law.”"

GENERATIVE AI IS CREATING A COPYRIGHT CRISIS FOR ARTISTS; Mind Matters, June 3, 2024

 DENYSE O'LEARY, Mind Matters; GENERATIVE AI IS CREATING A COPYRIGHT CRISIS FOR ARTISTS

"The problem, Crawford and Schultz say, is that copyright law, as currently framed, does not really protect individuals under these circumstances. That’s not surprising. Copyright dates back to at least 1710 and the issues were very different then.

For one thing, as Jonathan Bartlett pointed out last December, when the New York Times launched a lawsuit for copyright violation against Microsoft and OpenAI, everyone accepted that big search engines have always violated copyright. But if they brought people to your site, while saving and using your content for themselves, you were getting something out of it at least.

But it’s different with generative AI and the chatbot. They use and replace your content. Users are not going back to you for more. OpenAI freely admits that it violates copyright but relies on loopholes to get around legal responsibility.

As the lawsuits pile up, it’s clear that gen AI and chatbots can’t work without these billions of images and texts. So we either do without them or we find a way to compensate the producers."