World IP Day: How the Copyright System Builds Our Common Future; Library of Congress Blogs: Copyright Creativity at Work, April 26, 2024

 Ashley Tucker, Library of Congress Blogs: Copyright Creativity at Work; World IP Day: How the Copyright System Builds Our Common Future

"The following is a guest blog post by Miriam Lord, Associate Register of Copyrights and Director of Public Information and Education. 

Each year on April 26, the U.S. Copyright Office joins intellectual property organizations around the world in celebrating World Intellectual Property Day. This year’s theme, set by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), is “IP and the Sustainable Development Goals: Building Our Common Future with Innovation and Creativity.” Established by the United Nations, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) serve as a “shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future.”

The copyright system is a powerful mechanism for ensuring society’s wealth of culture and knowledge. The system also helps creators sustain themselves by granting them certain exclusive rights over their works. In the United States, this concept is so central that it is enshrined in our Constitution.

“Congress shall have Power . . . To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

-United States Constitution, Article I, Section 8"

Op-Ed: AI’s Most Pressing Ethics Problem; Columbia Journalism Review, April 23, 2024

 ANIKA COLLIER NAVAROLI, Columbia Journalism Review; Op-Ed: AI’s Most Pressing Ethics Problem

"I believe that, now more than ever, it’s time for people to organize and demand that AI companies pause their advance toward deploying more powerful systems and work to fix the technology’s current failures. While it may seem like a far-fetched idea, in February, Google decided to suspend its AI chatbot after it was enveloped in a public scandal. And just last month, in the wake of reporting about a rise in scams using the cloned voices of loved ones to solicit ransom, OpenAI announced it would not be releasing its new AI voice generator, citing its “potential for synthetic voice misuse.”

But I believe that society can’t just rely on the promises of American tech companies that have a history of putting profits and power above people. That’s why I argue that Congress needs to create an agency to regulate the industry. In the realm of AI, this agency should address potential harms by prohibiting the use of synthetic data and by requiring companies to audit and clean the original training data being used by their systems.

AI is now an omnipresent part of our lives. If we pause to fix the mistakes of the past and create new ethical guidelines and guardrails, it doesn’t have to become an existential threat to our future."

U.S. bans noncompete agreements for nearly all jobs; NPR, April 23, 2024

 Andrea Hsu , NPR; U.S. bans noncompete agreements for nearly all jobs

"The Federal Trade Commission narrowly voted Tuesday to ban nearly all noncompetes, employment agreements that typically prevent workers from joining competing businesses or launching ones of their own...

"For more than a year, the group has vigorously opposed the ban, saying that noncompetes are vital to companies, by allowing them to better guard trade secrets, and employees, by giving employers greater incentive to invest in workforce training and development."

LeBron James tattoo artist loses trial against 'NBA 2K' maker Take-Two; Reuters, April 19, 2024

Blake Brittain , Reuters; LeBron James tattoo artist loses trial against 'NBA 2K' maker Take-Two

"Take-Two Interactive's 2K Games, the maker of the popular 'NBA 2K' basketball video-game series, convinced an Ohio federal jury on Friday to reject allegations that its use of LeBron James' tattoos in its games violated the rights of the Cleveland-based artist who inked them.

The jury determined that Take-Two had an implied license to depict the tattoos based on its agreement to use James' likeness in the games and found that tattoo artist Jimmy Hayden's copyrights had not been infringed."

Congress Explores AI and Copyright Law; The Federalist Society, April 16, 2024

Lynn White, The Federalist Society; Congress Explores AI and Copyright Law

"Interest in artificial intelligence (AI) has surged in the 118th Congress. There have been several hearings on a range of topics related to AI, including how federal agencies are using it and general principles for regulating its use. The House Committee on Judiciary, Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet, has held a series of hearings related to AI and Intellectual Property...

Members of the committee seemed interested in the content of the hearing and expressed appreciation for the bi-partisan approach used to explore the issue of AI and intellectual property. Chairman Issa noted that this hearing was just the first of many. He further stated that he believes that Congress will find some middle ground that respects existing copyright law but allows generative AI to continue to grow. Over the next few blog posts, we will summarize this series of hearings and highlight the issues the witnesses and members of Congress discussed."

Public domain, where there is life after copyright; CBS News, Sunday Morning, April 14, 2024

Lee Cowan , CBS News, Sunday Morning; Public domain, where there is life after copyright

"Jenkins said, "The public domain doesn't represent the death of copyright. It's just the second part of copyright's life cycle."

The concept of putting an expiration date on intellectual property was something the founding fathers actually put in the U.S. Constitution, "...to promote the progress of science and the useful arts." They left it to Congress, however, to decide just how long copyright terms should last...

Duke University's Jennifer Jenkins said, "Copyright gives rights to creators and their descendants that provide incentives to create. But the public domain really is the soil for future creativity."

There are surely more copyright clashes ahead. Characters like Bugs Bunny, Superman and Batman will all find themselves out of copyright protection soon enough.

Even Luke Skywalker will eventually find himself in the public domain, too, sometime around 2073. That sure seems like a galaxy far, far way."

New bill would force AI companies to reveal use of copyrighted art; The Guardian, April 9, 2024

Nick Robins-Early, The Guardian ; New bill would force AI companies to reveal use of copyrighted art

"A bill introduced in the US Congress on Tuesday intends to force artificial intelligence companies to reveal the copyrighted material they use to make their generative AI models. The legislation adds to a growing number of attempts from lawmakers, news outlets and artists to establish how AI firms use creative works like songs, visual art, books and movies to train their software–and whether those companies are illegally building their tools off copyrighted content.

The California Democratic congressman Adam Schiff introduced the bill, the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act, which would require that AI companies submit any copyrighted works in their training datasets to the Register of Copyrights before releasing new generative AI systems, which create text, images, music or video in response to users’ prompts. The bill would need companies to file such documents at least 30 days before publicly debuting their AI tools, or face a financial penalty. Such datasets encompass billions of lines of text and images or millions of hours of music and movies."

OpenAI’s GPT Store Is Triggering Copyright Complaints; Wired, April 4, 2024

Kate Knibbs, Wired ; OpenAI’s GPT Store Is Triggering Copyright Complaints

"It is easy to find bots in the GPT Store whose descriptions suggest they might be tapping copyrighted content in some way, as Techcrunch noted in a recent article claiming OpenAI’s store was overrun with “spam.” Using copyrighted material without permission is permissable in some contexts but in others rightsholders can take legal action."

Where AI and property law intersect; Arizona State University (ASU) News, April 5, 2024

 Dolores Tropiano, Arizona State University (ASU) News; Where AI and property law intersect

"Artificial intelligence is a powerful tool that has the potential to be used to revolutionize education, creativity, everyday life and more.

But as society begins to harness this technology and its many uses — especially in the field of generative AI — there are growing ethical and copyright concerns for both the creative industry and legal sector.

Tyson Winarski is a professor of practice with the Intellectual Property Law program in Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. He teaches an AI and intellectual property module within the course Artificial Intelligence: Law, Ethics and Policy, taught by ASU Law Professor Gary Marchant.

“The course is extremely important for attorneys and law students,” Winarski said. “Generative AI is presenting huge issues in the area of intellectual property rights and copyrights, and we do not have definitive answers as Congress and the courts have not spoken on the issue yet.”"

Swift’s Latest Hit: Copyright Law; Boston College Law School Magazine Online, April 5, 2024

Sean Doolittle ’24, Boston College Law School Magazine Online; Swift’s Latest Hit: Copyright Law

"Greenstein described the impact that Swift’s gambit has had on the music industry: “Labels invest in artists, they hire producers, they pay for recording time, and they want to recover that investment. Recording agreements often prohibited musical artists from going out and re-recording a song for a period of five to seven years from the original release date of the record, or two years from the expiration of the contract. Now, thanks to Taylor Swift, they’re pushing that up to ten, fifteen, maybe even thirty years,” he warned. Once bitten, twice shy, as they say.

Swift has, in other words, slammed the door in the face of new artists hoping to come up through the recording industry, making it that much harder for future musicians to negotiate for ownership of their music. Now, up-and-coming musicians will be largely stripped of the ability to re-record their music and acquire the phonogram copyrights in a song for decades—well past their prime popularity, in all likelihood—instead of the traditional five- to seven-year period. Popular established musicians, on the other hand, stand to benefit, reinforcing the exclusive nature of the music industry."

Taylor’s Version of copyright; Harvard Law School, April 3, 2024

Brett Milano, Harvard Law School ; Taylor’s Version of copyright

"When Taylor Swift began re-recording her old albums and releasing the new, improved “Taylor’s Version,” she did more than delight a nation of Swifties. She also opened significant questions about the role of intellectual property in contract law, and possibly tipped the balance toward artists.

According to Gary R. Greenstein, a technology transactions partner at Wilson Sonsini, the Swift affair is one of many that makes these times especially interesting for copyright law. Greenstein’s current practice focuses on intellectual property, licensing, and commercial transactions, with specialized expertise in the digital exploitation of intellectual property. He appeared at Harvard Law School on March 28 for a lunchtime talk, which was presented and introduced by Chris Bavitz, the WilmerHale Clinical Professor of Law and managing director of the law school’s Cyberlaw Clinic. “I have been doing this for 28 years now and there is never a dull moment,” Greenstein said.

Greenstein placed the Swift story in the larger context of music copyrights. In music, he explained, there are always two copyrights. The first is for the musical work itself, and this is usually controlled by the composer/songwriter, or by a publishing company acting on their behalf. The second is the “master,” the recorded performance of the work, and this is usually controlled by the label."

George Carlin’s Estate Reaches Settlement After A.I. Podcast; The New York Times, April 2, 2024

Christopher Kuo , The New York Times; George Carlin’s Estate Reaches Settlement After A.I. Podcast

"The estate of the comedian George Carlin reached a settlement on Monday with the makers of a podcast who had said they had used artificial intelligence to impersonate Mr. Carlin for a comedy special...

Mr. Carlin’s estate filed the suit in January, saying that Mr. Sasso and Mr. Kultgen, hosts of the podcast “Dudesy,” had infringed on the estate’s copyrights by training an A.I. algorithm on five decades of Mr. Carlin’s work for the special “George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead,” which was posted on YouTube. The lawsuit also said they had illegally used Mr. Carlin’s name and likeness."

Billie Eilish and Nicki Minaj want stop to 'predatory' music AI; BBC, April 2, 2024

 Liv McMahon , BBC; Billie Eilish and Nicki Minaj want stop to 'predatory' music AI

"Billie Eilish and Nicki Minaj are among 200 artists calling for the "predatory" use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the music industry to be stopped.

In an open letter also signed by Katy Perry and the estate of Frank Sinatra, they warn AI "will set in motion a race to the bottom" if left unchecked...

Other artists have since spoken out about it, with Sting telling the BBC he believes musicians face "a battle" to defend their work against the rise of songs written by AI.

"The building blocks of music belong to us, to human beings," he said.

But not all musicians oppose developments in or use of AI across the music industry, and electronic artist Grimes and DJ David Guetta are among those backing the use of such AI tools."

‘The People’s Joker’ and the Perils of Playing With a Studio’s Copyright; The New York Times, April 1, 2024

 Eric Grode, The New York Times; ‘The People’s Joker’ and the Perils of Playing With a Studio’s Copyright

"The Joker may be the purview of DC Comics, not Marvel, but the fear of running afoul of copyright laws was no less of a concern.

“I kept myself very informed legally in terms of what qualifies as a parody and what fair use really is,” said Drew, referring to the legal doctrine that allows artists to use copyrighted material without permission or consequence depending on the circumstances. The “People’s Joker” poster calls it “A Fair Use Film by Vera Drew.”

Rebecca Tushnet, a professor at Harvard Law School and an expert in fair use, said artistic works find themselves on safer legal ground when they comment on the original material in a transformative way.

“Favored use is critical in that it performs an interpretation,” said Tushnet, who has not seen the film but was willing to discuss it in the abstract. “A parody is the classic example, but it doesn’t have to be funny. If the metaphor that the Joker represents here is a different metaphor, then it might well fall under the category of transformative fair use."”

A fight to protect the dignity of Michelangelo’s David raises questions about freedom of expression; AP, March 28, 2024

 Colleen Barry, AP; A fight to protect the dignity of Michelangelo’s David raises questions about freedom of expression

"The decisions challenge a widely held practice that intellectual property rights are protected for a specified period before entering the public domain — the artist’s lifetime plus 70 years, according to the Berne Convention signed by more than 180 countries including Italy.

More broadly, the decisions raise the question of whether institutions should be the arbiters of taste, and to what extent freedom of expression is being limited...

Court cases have debated whether Italy’s law violates a 2019 European Union directive stating that any artwork no longer protected by copyright falls into the public domain, meaning that “everybody should be free to make, use and share copies of that work.”

The EU Commission has not addressed the issue, but a spokesman told the AP that it is currently checking “conformity of the national laws implementing the copyright directive” and would look at whether Italy’s cultural heritage code interferes with its application."