The Media Industry’s Race To License Content For AI; Forbes, July 18, 2024

 Bill Rosenblatt, Forbes; The Media Industry’s Race To License Content For AI

"AI content licensing initiatives abound. More and more media companies have reached license agreements with AI companies individually. Several startups have formed to aggregate content into large collections for AI platforms to license in one-stop shopping arrangements known in the jargon as blanket licenses. There are now so many such startups that last month they formed a trade association—the Dataset Providers Alliance—to organize them for advocacy.

Ironically, the growing volume of all this activity could jeopardize its value for copyright owners and AI platforms alike.

It will take years before the panoply of lawsuits yield any degree of clarity in the legal rules for copyright in the AI age; we’re in the second year of what is typically a decade-long process for copyright laws to adapt to disruptive technologies. One reason for copyright owners to organize now to provide licenses for AI is that—as we’ve learned from analogous situations in the past—both courts and Congress will consider is how easy it is for the AI companies to license content properly in determining whether licensing is required."

AI Can Actually Help Protect Creativity and Copyrights: Guest Post by Reservoir Music CEO Golnar Khosrowshahi; Variety, June 28, 2023

Golnar Khosrowshahi, Variety ; AI Can Actually Help Protect Creativity and Copyrights: Guest Post by Reservoir Music CEO Golnar Khosrowshahi

"Used correctly, AI can actually help us preserve and protect copyright — versus the present fear of usurping it. Through audio fingerprinting, AI tools that verify authorship in real time will help reduce the unnecessary litigation that can be based on subjective interpretations or human error. AI will also equip both owners and distributors of content (i.e. streaming services) with significant changes in how we classify and catalog music (e.g., the micro categories that we can use to further define characteristics and attributes of songs). Not only can we then better understand the music, but we can also be more efficient at micro licensing, delving into why listeners love what they love, both in the moment in the context of a trend, and over time when it comes to standards and classics...

In any event, we first need to make sure that the ingestion of copyrights that enable AI is adequately policed and paid for, which is where a lot of important discussion and focus is today.  Advocating for rights holders and copyright protection is a routine part of our business, and regardless of whether an infringer is human or artificial doesn’t change our steadfast mission in upholding creators’ rights...

I have faith that the creators who have built this industry will continue to be the human driving force behind the art and connections we experience. I have faith the tools will help propel those creators and rights holders to new heights. I have faith in the protection of copyright through policy and legislation, and I have faith in the industry’s historic precedence of uncharted progress and success achieved in the face of technologic disruption.

So to those who fear the AI invasion, I say: keep calm, meet it head on and create something totally new, as only we humans can."

I Can't Get No Compensation: AI Image Generators and Copyright; Lexology, February 15, 2023

Davis Wright Tremaine LLP - James Rosenfeld, Barry A. Stulberg and Stevin S. George, Lexology; I Can't Get No Compensation: AI Image Generators and Copyright

"This case (and those mentioned in footnote 1), together with the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Foundation v. Goldsmith case argued October 12, 2022, before the U.S. Supreme Court (addressing the question of what does it mean for a work of art to be transformative "fair use" under U.S. copyright law, docket 21-869) will require courts to balance the competing interests of content owners and AI innovators."

The Demise Of Copyright Toleration; Techdirt, May 24, 2018

Robert S. Schwartz, Techdirt; The Demise Of Copyright Toleration

"Although denying fair use, these content owners were acknowledging a larger truth about copyright, the Internet, and even the law in general: It works largely due to toleration. Not every case is clear; not every outcome can be enforced; and not every potential legal outcome can be endured. Instead, “grey area” conduct must be impliedly licensed, or at least tolerated.

Counsel then or now could not have cited a single court holding on whether the private, noncommercial recording of a song is a lawful fair use. Long before the Supreme Court in Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. said that video home recording from broadcasts as a fair use, the music industry could have pursued consumers for home audio recording from vinyl records. But the risk of losing and establishing a bad precedent was too great.

Toleration endured because fair use, and the practicalities of enforcement, had to be endured by content owners. They recognized that their own creative members also relied on fair use in adapting and building on the works of contemporaries as well as earlier generations. They also realized that offending consumers by suing them might not be a good idea – a reason (in addition to the possibility of losing) why the Sony plaintiffs dropped the individual consumer defendants they had originally named."

Copyright infringement lawsuits make Indy skyline photo worth a lot more than 1,000 words; IndyStar, May 8, 2018

Mark Alesia, IndyStar; Copyright infringement lawsuits make Indy skyline photo worth a lot more than 1,000 words

"There have been about 200 infringement cases, including two judgments of $150,000 apiece in Bell's favor. Usually, companies or their liability insurance settle the claim. Those who don't settle or don't respond will become part of his steady stream of copyright infringement lawsuits in federal court in Indianapolis. 

Just in higher education, Bell has gone after Indiana University, Purdue University, the University of Indianapolis and Marian University. Even the University of Washington.

"It happened to be a professor on the University of Washington staff that used it," Bell said. "He was promoting a conference he was having in Indianapolis.""

How Ronda Rousey Clips Reveal Facebook’s Copyright Challenge; Fortune, 1/3/17

Jeff John Roberts, Fortune; 

How Ronda Rousey Clips Reveal Facebook’s Copyright Challenge:

"The copyright conundrum arose in early 2015 after Facebook (FB, +1.52%) faced a barrage of criticism over the phenomenon of "free-booting" in which people make copies of clips they see on YouTube (GOOG, +1.86%) and elsewhere, and then upload them as their own to Facebook, where the videos can be seen thousands or millions of times.

In response to the criticism—including an essay called "Theft, Lies, and Facebook Video"—the company in 2015 said it took the intellectual property issues seriously, and that it was expanding tools to help copyright owners protect their content.

Based on the latest proliferation of Rousey clips, though, it's hard to see how Facebook has made much progress. Unlike similar clips that appear on YouTube, the Facebook fight videos don't come with advertising, which means the copyright owner is not making any money from them. (YouTube has long had a system called Content ID that flags infringing clips and either remove them or place ads one them)."