An AI Maker Was Just Found Liable for Copyright Infringement. What Does This Portend for Content Creators and AI Makers?; The Federalist Society, February 25, 2025

  John Blanton Farmer , The Federalist Society; An AI Maker Was Just Found Liable for Copyright Infringement. What Does This Portend for Content Creators and AI Makers?

"In a case decided on February 11, the makers of generative AI (GenAI), such as ChatGPT, lost the first legal battle in the war over whether they commit copyright infringement by using the material of others as training data without permission. The case is called Thomson Reuters Enterprise Centre GmbH v. Ross Intelligence Inc.

If other courts follow this ruling, the cost of building and selling GenAI services will dramatically increase. Such businesses are already losing money.

The ruling could also empower content creators, such as writers, to deny the use of their material to train GenAIs or to demand license fees. Some creators might be unwilling to license use of their material for training AIs due to fear that GenAI will destroy demand for their work."

Jeff Bezos is muzzling the Washington Post’s opinion section. That’s a death knell; The Guardian, February 26, 2025

 Margaret Sullivan, The Guardian ; Jeff Bezos is muzzling the Washington Post’s opinion section. That’s a death knell

"Owners and publishers of news organizations often exert their will on opinion sections. It would be naive to think otherwise.

But a draconian announcement this week by Jeff Bezos, the Washington Postowner, goes far beyond the norm.

The billionaire declared that only opinions that support “personal liberties” and “free markets” will be welcome in the opinion pages of the Post.

“Viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others,” he added.

The paper’s top opinion editor, David Shipley, couldn’t get on board with those restrictions. He immediately – and appropriately – resigned.

Especially in the light of the billionaire’s other blatant efforts to cozy up to Donald Trump, Bezos’s move is more than a gut punch; it’s more like a death knell for the once-great news organization he bought in 2013...

What is clear is that Bezos no longer wants to own an independent news organization. He wants a megaphone and a political tool that will benefit his own commercial interests.

It’s appalling. And, if you care about the role of the press in America’s democracy, it’s tragic.

“What Bezos is doing today runs counter to what he said, and actually practiced, during my tenure at the Post,” Martin Baron, the paper’s executive editor until 2021 and the author of the 2023 memoir Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos and the Washington Post, told me in an email Wednesday.

“I have always been grateful for how he stood up for the Post and an independent press against Trump’s constant threats to his business interest,” Baron said. “Now, I couldn’t be more sad and disgusted.”...

This outrageous move will enrage them. I foresee a mass subscriber defection from an outlet already deep in red ink; that must be something businessman Bezos is willing to live with.

He must also be willing to live with hypocrisy.

“Bezos argues for personal liberties. But his news organization now will forbid views other than his own in its opinion section,” Baron pointed out, recalling that it was only weeks ago when the Post described itself in an internal mission statement as intended for “all of America”.

“Now,” Baron noted, “its opinion pages will be open to only some of America, those who think exactly as he does.”

It’s all about getting on board with Trump, to whose inauguration Bezos – through Amazon, the company he co-founded – contributed a million dollars. That allowed him a prime seat, along with others of his oligarchical ilk."

Post owner Bezos announces shift in opinions section; Shipley to leave; The Washington Post, February 26, 2025

 Washington Post staff , The Washington Post; Post owner Bezos announces shift in opinions section; Shipley to leave

"What readers are saying

The comments express strong disapproval of The Washington Post's new focus on "personal liberties and free markets" in its opinion section. Many readers perceive this shift as a move towards right-wing ideology and a departure from the paper's tradition of diverse and critical opinion pieces. There is a widespread sentiment that this change undermines journalistic integrity and stifles free speech, leading numerous subscribers to cancel their subscriptions in protest. Show less

This summary is AI-generated. AI can make mistakes and this summary is not a replacement for reading the comments."

Jeff Bezos, owner of The Washington Post, just sent out this email of total submission.; The Ink, February 26, 2025

The Ink; Jeff Bezos, owner of The Washington Post, just sent out this email of total submission.

[Kip Currier: Nail by nail by nail by nail, the three richest persons on the planet -- Elon Musk (Twitter/X), Jeff Bezos (Amazon/Washington Post), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta/Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp/Threads) -- are erecting barriers to information and solidifying control of their versions of information. 

Note what Bezos, in part, wrote today: 

"We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We'll cover other topics too, of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others."

Point 1: Bezos's prior conduct tells us that he will decide how the two pillars of "personal liberties" and "free markets" are defined. That's censorship of ideas and free expression.

Point 2: Bezos will determine the parameters of "viewpoints opposing those pillars". That's also censorship of free speech.

Point 3: Bezos downplays the time-honored tradition of U.S. newspapers providing "a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views" by stating that "Today, the internet does that job." This is an abject abandonment of the historical role of one of the nation's foremost papers of record; indeed, the very newspaper that exposed the Watergate scandal that brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon. Bezos knows, too, that the internet is rife with misinformation and disinformation. A chief reason that readers seek out creditable, trusted news providers like The Washington Post is the expectation of fact-checking and responsible curation of opinions and facts. Bezos's statement amounts to disingenuous dissembling and the ceding of responsibility to the Internet and social media, which he well knows are highly flawed information ecosystems.

Point 4: Bezos states later that "freedom is ethical". But freedom always comes with ethics-grounded responsibilities. Nowhere in Bezos's statement does he talk about ethical responsibilities to truthfulness, free speech, accountability, transparency, the public/common good, constitutional checks and balances, or the rule of law, all of which are integral to informed citizenries and functioning democracies.

Bezos's actions and viewpoints are antithetical to free and independent presses like The Washington Post, as well as to the core principles of one of the world's oldest democracies.]

[Excerpt]

"Jeff Bezos, owner of The Washington Post, just sent out this email of total submission.

Bezos appears to have misread Timothy Snyder’s advice “Do not obey in advance” as “Obey in advance,” missing a couple words."

UK newspapers launch campaign against AI copyright plans; Independent, February 25, 2025

Martyn Landi, Independent; UK newspapers launch campaign against AI copyright plans

"Some of the UK’s biggest newspapers have used a coordinated campaign across their front pages to raise their concerns about AI’s impact on the creative industries.

Special wraps appeared on Tuesday’s editions of the Daily Express, Daily Mail, The Mirror, the Daily Star, The i, The Sun, and The Times – as well as a number of regional titles – criticising a Government consultation around possible exemptions being added to copyright law for training AI models.

The proposals would allow tech firms to use copyrighted material from creatives and publishers without having to pay or gain a licence, or reimbursing creatives for using their work."

Musicians release silent album to protest UK's AI copyright changes; Reuters, February 25, 2025

 Sam Tabahriti, Reuters; Musicians release silent album to protest UK's AI copyright changes

"More than 1,000 musicians, including Kate Bush and Cat Stevens, on Tuesday released a silent album to protest proposed changes to Britain's copyright laws, which could allow tech firms to train artificial intelligence models using their work."

Goncharov (1973), Internet Folklore, and Corporate Copyright; JETLaw (The Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law), January 25, 2025

Stacey M. Lantagne, JETLaw (The Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law); Goncharov (1973), Internet Folklore, and Corporate Copyright

"Goncharov (1973) is a meme, which is a term broadly used to refer to a species of viral internet creativity. Memes can be many different things, but Goncharov is an especially rich, complex, collaborative, and mutating one. It revolves around a movie that does not exist. Goncharov is a fictional Martin Scorsese film that the internet collectively pretends was produced in 1973. Over the course of a few feverish weeks in the fall of 2022, social media users, with no coordination and without knowledge of each other or the overall project, created a cast, storyline, soundtrack, reviews, fanfiction, and a promotional poster. And they did it all for free. Actually, they did it all for fun—a concept foreign to copyright law’s idea of what drives creativity.

This Article uses Goncharov to illustrate how copyright law doctrines have developed to support a narrow, corporate conception of copyright. Copyright law depends heavily on an understanding of creativity as an economic venture mediated by contractual relationships. Sprawling collaborative and unmonetized memes like the Goncharov meme sit uneasily in the system because they are likely uncopyrightable as a type of folklore. However, positioning a meme like Goncharov as the equivalent of public domain folklore leaves it vulnerable to financial exploitation. This Article uses the vehicle of Goncharov to ask whether such a result is what copyright law should support, or whether we should rethink how we treat the new traditional knowledge being developed daily by our creative culture. This Article argues that copyright law dangerously focuses attention on a very small slice of human creativity, leaving vast amounts of creativity devalued as undeserving of legal protection. This hierarchy paints a watered-down picture of creativity. Creativity, as can be seen just in the single example of the Goncharov meme, is so much more complex, multi-faceted, unpredictable, and interesting than current copyright law posits. As we prepare to grapple with machine-generated creativity that may challenge copyright assumptions, we should not forget the vast swaths of human creativity that also challenge those assumptions.

PDF Download Link"

Copyright 'sell-out' will silence British musicians, says BRIAN MAY; Daily Mail, February 23, 2025

Andy Behring , Daily Mail; Copyright 'sell-out' will silence British musicians, says BRIAN MAY

"No one will make music in Britain any more if Labour's AI copyright proposal succeeds, Sir Brian May warned last night as he backed the Daily Mail's campaign against it.

The Queen guitarist said he feared it may already be 'too late' because 'monstrously arrogant' Big Tech barons have already carried out an industrial-scale 'theft' of Britain's cultural genius.

He called on the Government to apply the brakes before the next chapter of Britain's rich cultural heritage – which includes Shakespeare, Chaucer, James Bond, The Beatles and Britpop – is nipped in the bud thanks to Sir Keir Starmer's copyright 'sell-out'...

Sir Brian said: 'My fear is that it's already too late – this theft has already been performed and is unstoppable, like so many incursions that the monstrously arrogant billionaire owners of Al and social media are making into our lives. The future is already forever changed."

Are Birkenstocks a Work of Art? A German Court Says No.; The New York Times, February 20, 2025

Jacob Gallagher, The New York Times; Are Birkenstocks a Work of Art? A German Court Says No.

"On Thursday, the federal court of justice in Karlsruhe, Germany, ruled that Birkenstocks were not “copyrighted works of applied art,” making it harder for the 251-year-old German shoemaker to combat the widespread sale of duplicates of its sandals across the internet. 

“For copyright protection to apply, there must be such a degree of design that the product displays some individuality,” the court wrote in its decision. Birkenstock’s sandals may be iconic enough for a “Barbie” movie cameo, but they do not display enough individuality for the German judiciary.

The case has been winding its way through the court system for years, as Birkenstock sought to copyright four of its orthopedic-rooted slip-ons: the Madrid, Arizona, Boston and Gizeh, which have inspired cheaper imitations."

AI and Copyright: Expanding Copyright Hurts Everyone—Here’s What to Do Instead; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), February 19, 2025

TORI NOBLE, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); AI and Copyright: Expanding Copyright Hurts Everyone—Here’s What to Do Instead

[Kip Currier: No, not everyone. Not requiring Big Tech to figure out a way to fairly license or get permission to use the copyrighted works of creators unjustly advantages these deep pocketed corporations. It also inequitably disadvantages the economic and creative interests of the human beings who labor to create copyrightable content -- authors, songwriters, visual artists, and many others.

The tell is that many of these same Big Tech companies are only too willing to file copyright infringement lawsuits against anyone whom they allege is infringing their AI content to create competing products and services.]

[Excerpt]

"Threats to Socially Valuable Research and Innovation 

Requiring researchers to license fair uses of AI training data could make socially valuable research based on machine learning (ML) and even text and data mining (TDM) prohibitively complicated and expensive, if not impossible. Researchers have relied on fair use to conduct TDM research for a decade, leading to important advancements in myriad fields. However, licensing the vast quantity of works that high-quality TDM research requires is frequently cost-prohibitive and practically infeasible.  

Fair use protects ML and TDM research for good reason. Without fair use, copyright would hinder important scientific advancements that benefit all of us. Empirical studies back this up: research using TDM methodologies are more common in countries that protect TDM research from copyright control; in countries that don’t, copyright restrictions stymie beneficial research. It’s easy to see why: it would be impossible to identify and negotiate with millions of different copyright owners to analyze, say, text from the internet."

AI and ethics: No advancement can ever justify a human rights violation; Vatican News, February 16, 2025

 Kielce Gussie, Vatican News; AI and ethics: No advancement can ever justify a human rights violation

"By 2028, global spending on artificial intelligence will skyrocket to $632 billion, according to the International Data Corporation. In a world where smartphones, computers, and ChatGPT continue to be the center of debate, it's no wonder the need for universal regulation and awareness has become a growing topic of discussion.

To address this issue, an international two-day summit focused on AI was held in Paris, France. The goal was to bring stakeholders from the public, private, and academic sectors together to begin building an AI ecosystem that is trustworthy and safe.

Experts in various areas of the artificial intelligence sphere gathered to partake in the discussion, including Australian professor and member of the Australian Government’s Artificial Intelligence Expert Group, Edward Santow. He described feeling hopeful that the summit would advance the safety agenda of AI.

Trustworthiness and safety

On the heels of this summit, the Australian Embassy to the Holy See hosted a panel discussion to address the ethical and human rights challenges in utilizing AI. There, Prof. Santow described his experience at the Paris summit, highlighting the difficulty in building an atmosphere of trust with AI on a global scale."

 

Copyright battles loom over artists and AI; Financial Times, February 16, 2025

louise.lucas@ft.com, Financial Times ; Copyright battles loom over artists and AI

"Artists are the latest creative industry to gripe about the exploitative nature of artificial intelligence. More than 3,000 have written to protest against plans by Christie’s to auction art created using AI."

Court filings show Meta paused efforts to license books for AI training; TechCrunch, February 14, 3025

Kyle Wiggers, TechCrunch; Court filings show Meta paused efforts to license books for AI training

"According to one transcript, Sy Choudhury, who leads Meta’s AI partnership initiatives, said that Meta’s outreach to various publishers was met with “very slow uptake in engagement and interest.”

“I don’t recall the entire list, but I remember we had made a long list from initially scouring the Internet of top publishers, et cetera,” Choudhury said, per the transcript, “and we didn’t get contact and feedback from — from a lot of our cold call outreaches to try to establish contact.”

Choudhury added, “There were a few, like, that did, you know, engage, but not many.”

According to the court transcripts, Meta paused certain AI-related book licensing efforts in early April 2023 after encountering “timing” and other logistical setbacks. Choudhury said some publishers, in particular fiction book publishers, turned out to not in fact have the rights to the content that Meta was considering licensing, per a transcript.

“I’d like to point out that the — in the fiction category, we quickly learned from the business development team that most of the publishers we were talking to, they themselves were representing that they did not have, actually, the rights to license the data to us,” Choudhury said. “And so it would take a long time to engage with all their authors.”"

AI companies flaunt their theft. News media has to fight back – so we're suing. | Opinion; USA Today, February 13, 2025

 Danielle Coffey, USA Today; AI companies flaunt their theft. News media has to fight back – so we're suing. | Opinion

"Danielle Coffey is president & CEO of the News/Media Alliance, which represents 2,000 news and magazine media outlets worldwide...

This is not an anti-AI lawsuit or an effort to turn back the clock. We love technology. We use it in our businesses. Artificial intelligence will help us better serve our customers, but only if it respects intellectual property. That’s the remedy we’re seeking in court.

When it suits them, the AI companies assert similar claims to ours. Meta's lawsuit accused Bright Data of scraping data in violation of its terms of use. And Sam Altman of OpenAI has complained that DeepSeek illegally copied its algorithms.

Good actors, responsible technologies and potential legislation offer some hope for improving the situation. But what is urgently needed is what every market needs: reinforcement of legal protections against theft."

No. 42 law firm by head count could face sanctions over fake case citations generated by AI; ABA Journal, February 10, 2025

 DEBRA CASSENS WEISS, ABA Journal; No. 42 law firm by head count could face sanctions over fake case citations generated by AI

"Updated: Lawyers from plaintiffs law firm Morgan & Morgan are facing possible sanctions for a motion that cited eight nonexistent cases, at least some of which were apparently generated by artificial intelligence.

In a Feb. 6 order, U.S. District Judge Kelly H. Rankin of the District of Wyoming told lawyers from Morgan & Morgan and the Goody Law Group to provide copies of the cited cases, and if they can’t, to show cause why they shouldn’t be sanctioned."

News publishers sue Cohere for copyright and trademark infringement; Axios, February 13, 2025

• Sara Fischer, Axios; News publishers sue Cohere for copyright and trademark infringement

"More than a dozen major U.S. news organizations on Thursday said they were suing Cohere, an enterprise AI company, claiming the tech startup illegally repurposed their work and did so in a way that tarnished their brands.

Why it matters: The lawsuit represents the first official legal action against an AI company organized by the News Media Alliance — the largest news media trade group in the U.S...

• The NMA members participating in the lawsuit include Advance Local Media, Condé Nast, The Atlantic, Forbes Media, The Guardian, Business Insider, The Los Angeles Times, McClatchy Media Company, Newsday, Plain Dealer Publishing Company, Politico, The Republican Company, Toronto Star Newspapers, and Vox Media.

Between the lines: The complaint was filed shortly after the U.S. Copyright Office changed its copyright registration processes to make them faster for digital publishers.

• Previously, the process by which digital publishers had to file for copyright protections for individual works was extremely cumbersome, limiting their ability to seek protection. 

Because of those changes, Coffey explained, NMA and the publishers who are suing Cohere were able to identify thousands of specific examples of Cohere verbatim copying their copyright-protected works."

This is the First-Ever AI Image to Be Granted Copyright Protection; PetaPixel, February 12, 2025

MATT GROWCOOT, PetaPixel; This is the First-Ever AI Image to Be Granted Copyright Protection

"A company has secured the first-ever copyright protection for an artwork entirely generated by AI from the U.S. Copyright Office.

Kent Keirsey, CEO of Invoke, demonstrated to the U.S. Copyright Office that he had inputted enough human creativity into the image to warrant protection. 

Invoke is a generative AI platform for professional studios to create visual media. Keirsey used Invoke’s inpainting features to iterate upon an AI-generated image, coordinating and arranging where to inpaint and then selecting from multiple options to create a composite work which he calls A Single Piece of American Cheese. He added roughly 35 AI edits to the AI image."

As US and UK refuse to sign the Paris AI Action Summit statement, other countries commit to developing ‘open, inclusive, ethical’ AI;TechCrunch, February 11, 2025

Romain Dillet, TechCrunch ; As US and UK refuse to sign the Paris AI Action Summit statement, other countries commit to developing ‘open, inclusive, ethical’ AI

"The Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris was supposed to culminate with a joint declaration on artificial intelligence signed by dozens of world leaders. While the statement isn’t as ambitious as the Bletchley and Seoul declarations, both the U.S. and the U.K. have refused to sign it.

It proves once again that it is difficult to reach a consensus around artificial intelligence — and other topics — in the current (fraught) geopolitical context.

“We feel very strongly that AI must remain free from ideological bias and that American AI will not be co-opted into a tool for authoritarian censorship,” U.S. vice president, JD Vance, said in a speech during the summit’s closing ceremony.

“The United States of America is the leader in AI, and our administration plans to keep it that way,” he added.

In all, 61 countries — including China, India, Japan, Australia, and Canada — have signed the declaration that states a focus on “ensuring AI is open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy.” It also calls for greater collaboration when it comes to AI governance, fostering a “global dialogue.”

Early reactions have expressed disappointment over a lack of ambition."