ASHLEY BELANGER , Ars Technica; It’s too expensive to fight every AI copyright battle, Getty CEO says
"On Bluesky, a trial lawyer, Max Kennerly, effectively satirized Clegg and the whole AI industry by writing, "Our product creates such little value that it is simply not viable in the marketplace, not even as a niche product. Therefore, we must be allowed to unilaterally extract value from the work of others and convert that value into our profits."
John Blanton Farmer , The Federalist Society ; The Copyright Office’s Report on AI Training Material and Fair Use: Will It Stymie the U.S. AI Industry?
"Will the Trump Administration Withdraw the Report?
The Trump Administration might withdraw this report.
The Trump Administration is friendlier to the U.S. AI industry than the Biden Administration was. Shortly after taking office, it rescinded a Biden Administration executive order on the development and use of AI, which was restrictive and burdensome.
The day before the report was released, the Trump Administration fired the head of the Library of Congress, which oversees the USCO. The day after the report was issued, it fired the head of the USCO. The administration didn’t comment on whether these firings were related to the report.
The USCO may have rushed out the report to prevent the Trump Administration from meddling with it. The version released was labeled a “pre-publication version.” It’s unusual to release a non-final version.
This report is not the law. Courts will decide this fair use issue. They’ll certainly consider this report, but they aren’t bound to follow it."
Kim Bellware, The Washington Post; Author sides with students in revolt over book passage used in AP exam
"Serpell, herself a longtime critic of standardized tests, said the College Board, the billion-dollar standardized-testing juggernaut that administers them, did not ask permission to use her work and distorted her writing.
“Stranger Faces,” a collection of essays on the pleasure people take in unusual faces in works of art, was geared toward professional scholars, not high school readers, Serpell said, and she insists that the complexity of her writing can only be understood in fuller context. The exam excerpt, she said, omitted critical writing that would have made her arguments and rhetorical effects clearer.
As Serpell deals with the fallout — which, in some cases, she said, included death threats — she is siding with the students, taking up their arguments with the College Board and touching off a heated online debate over academic ethics."
Copyright Alliance; Copyright Alliance CEO and Others Resign from ALI’s Copyright Restatement Project
"In a statement issued today, Copyright Alliance CEO Keith Kupferschmid announced that he, along with numerous other advisers and liaisons, have resigned from the American Law Institute’s (ALI) Restatement of Copyright Law (Restatement) project, effective immediately. The resignations follow those of four prominent law professors earlier this week.
According to Kupferschmid, “I am officially announcing my departure from the ALI’s Copyright Restatement project for a number of critical reasons, including the fact that throughout the initiative, ALI Copyright Restatement Reporters routinely disregarded concerns and comments shared by the U.S. Copyright Office, judges, and numerous other expert participants. This input was not considered because it differed from the ALI Reporters’ views and biases regarding copyright law.
“Before the start of this project, we and many others warned that the Copyright Restatement effort was likely to look much more like a restatement of the Reporters’ views rather than actual copyright law. Unfortunately, these predictions came true, resulting in the final version of the Copyright Restatement presenting a restrictive and warped view of copyright—one that is inconsistent with the statute and case law and reflects the Reporters’ aspirations to change the copyright law.
“There is a general undercurrent of anti-copyright sentiment that runs through the entire Copyright Restatement that manifests itself through a disproportionate focus on atypical court decisions that limit the scope of copyright protection. Not only does the ALI Restatement emphasize minority and outlier decisions and focuses on the exceptions rather than the rules, but at times during the project, the Reporters also drew conclusions that the current law simply does not support.
“It is for these reasons that I have signed onto a letter to the ALI voicing my concerns and stepping down from my role as liaison. I am not alone in this belief, as evidenced by the fact that approximately half of the advisers and liaisons have, or are in the process of, resigning from this project, one that that falls far short of the ALI’s otherwise high standards and stellar reputation.”
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ABOUT THE COPYRIGHT ALLIANCE
The Copyright Alliance is a non-profit, non-partisan public interest and educational organization representing the copyright interests of over two million individual creators and over 15,000 organizations in the United States, across the spectrum of copyright disciplines. The Copyright Alliance is dedicated to advocating policies that promote and preserve the value of copyright, and to protecting the rights of creators and innovators. The Copyright Alliance is the unified voice of the copyright community, and the views espoused may not reflect the specific views of any individual or organization. For more information, please visit our website."
Press Release, The American Law Institute ; Restatement of the Law, Copyright Is Approved
"The American Law Institute’s membership voted today to approve Restatement of the Law, Copyright. This is the first Restatement devoted to copyright law and provides guidance to courts in areas in which the governing statute leaves significant scope for discretion in this complex field. Restatements are primarily addressed to courts. They aim at clear formulations of the law and reflect the law as it presently stands or might appropriately be stated by a court. Launched in 2014, the project has been presented in stages at ALI’s Annual Meetings over the past five years.
The Reporter for the project is Christopher Jon Sprigman of New York University School of Law. Associate Reporters are Daniel J. Gervais of Vanderbilt University Law School; Lydia Pallas Loren of Lewis & Clark Law School; R. Anthony Reese of University of California, Irvine School of Law; and Molly S. Van Houweling of University of California, Berkeley School of Law.
“The Copyright Restatement represents a major milestone in ALI’s ongoing work to clarify areas the law,” said ALI Director Diane P. Wood. “Copyright law is rooted in a detailed federal statute, yet the courts continue to play a critical role in interpreting key concepts and applying them in new technological and creative contexts. This Restatement brings coherence and analytical rigor to these interpretive challenges. It provides courts and practitioners with a principled guide to the areas in which judges have been asked to exercise their discretion. Like ALI’s recent Restatement work on U.S. Foreign Relations Law and The Law of American Indians, the Copyright project reflects our commitment to supporting the sound development of the law.”
“The Copyright Act, while comprehensive in some areas, leaves many important questions to be worked out in the courts,” added Reporter Sprigman. “This Restatement distills and organizes how courts have addressed these open questions and offers clear guidance. Copyright law has never stood still—it evolves with the ways we create, share, and build upon culture, knowledge, and information. The Copyright Act provides the scaffolding, but the courts play a central role on many of the most consequential questions in copyright law. What this Restatement does is gather, organize, and clarify the case law that fills in those statutory gaps. We aimed to reflect how judges have actually decided these issues and to present the guidance in a way that is accessible, coherent, and faithful to doctrine. It has been a privilege to work with such a deeply knowledgeable team of Associate Reporters, Advisers, Liaisons, and ALI members, and I believe the final product will serve as an essential secondary source for years to come.”
This Restatement offers guidance to courts in areas of copyright law including the boundary between copyrightable expression and uncopyrightable ideas and facts; the scope of exclusive rights; ownership and transfer rules; infringement standards; defenses like fair use and first sale; and available remedies.
The publication is organized into eleven chapters:
ALI Reporters, under the oversight of the Director, will now prepare the Institute’s official text for publication. At this stage, Reporters may update citations, make editorial revisions, and incorporate any final changes approved during the Annual Meeting. Until the official Volume is published, the approved Tentative Drafts represent the official position of The American Law Institute and may be cited as such.
* * *
About The American Law Institute
The American Law Institute is the leading independent organization in the United States producing scholarly work to clarify, modernize, and improve the law. The ALI drafts, discusses, revises, and publishes Restatements of the Law, Model Codes, and Principles of Law that are influential in the courts and legislatures, as well as in legal scholarship and education. By participating in the Institute’s work, its distinguished members have the opportunity to influence the development of the law in both existing and emerging areas, to work with other eminent lawyers, judges, and academics, to support the rule of law and the legal system, and to contribute to the public good."
WSBTV.com News Staff , WSBTV.com; Fannin County school play canceled over copyright violation, principal says
"While the changes themselves were not detailed, and Channel 2 Action News has reached out for more information, school officials said the copyright violation from their license of the play made their decision for them.
“Upon investigation, we learned that the performance did not reflect the original script. These alterations were not approved by the licensing company or administration. The performance contract for The Crucible does not allow modifications without prior written approval. Failing to follow the proper licensing approval process for additions led to a breach in our contract with the play’s publisher,” school officials said. “The infraction resulted in an automatic termination of the licensing agreement. The second performance of The Crucible could not occur because we were no longer covered by a copyright agreement.”
The school also confirmed in their statement that the script is taught in English classes at the institution, though it is not a required text."
Katelyn Chedraoui , CNET; We're All Copyright Owners. Why You Need to Care About AI and Copyright
"Most of us don't think about copyright very often in our daily lives. But in the age of generative AI, it has quickly become one of the most important issues in the development and outputs of chatbots and image and video generators. It's something that affects all of us because we're all copyright owners and authors...
What does all of this mean for the future?
Copyright owners are in a bit of a holding pattern for now. But beyond the legal and ethical implications, copyright in the age of AI raises important questions about the value of creative work, the cost of innovation and the ways in which we need or ought to have government intervention and protections.
There are two distinct ways to view the US's intellectual property laws, Mammen said. The first is that these laws were enacted to encourage and reward human flourishing. The other is more economically focused; the things that we're creating have value, and we want our economy to be able to recognize that value accordingly."
DAVID MOSCROP , Jacobin; The AI and Copyright Issues Dividing Trump’s Court
"As many have pointed out, the copyright-AI battle is not only a central struggle within the Trump administration; it is also a broader conflict over who controls intellectual property and to what end. For decades, corporations have abused copyright to unreasonably extend coverage periods and impoverish the public domain. Their goal: maximizing both control over IP and profits. But AI firms aren’t interested in reforming that system. They’re not looking to open access or enrich the commons — they just want training data. And in fighting for it, they may end up reshaping copyright law in ways that outlast this administration.
As Nguyen notes, after the Register of Copyrights, Shira Perlmutter, was turfed by DOGE-aligned officials, Trump antitrust adviser Mike Davis posted to Truth Social: “Now tech bros are going to steal creators’ copyrights for AI profits. . . . This is 100 percent unacceptable.” Trump reposted it. That’s the shape of the struggle: MAGA populists, who see their own content as sacred property, are up against a tech elite that views all content as extractable fuel."
Phil Kerpen, Daily Journal; Intellectual property is our bedrock
"Elon Musk is probably the second-most powerful man in the world these days, so when he responded to Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s “delete all IP law” post with “I agree,” we need to take this radical proposal seriously.
Musk and Dorsey want their AI bots to remix all the world’s content without having to worry about who owns it, but it’s important that we slow down and start from first principles, or we risk undermining one of the foundations of our Constitution and economic system.
The moral case for IP was already powerfully articulated prior to American independence by John Locke. In his 1694 memorandum opposing the renewal of the Licensing Act, Locke wrote: “Books seem to me to be the most proper thing for a man to have a property in of any thing that is the product of his mind,” which is no doubt equally true of more modern creative works. Unlike physical property, which is a mixture of an individual’s work effort and the pre-existing natural world, creative works are the pure creation of the human mind. How could they not then properly be owned by their authors?
The Constitution cements this truth. Article I, Section 8 empowers Congress “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.” This clause isn’t incidental; it’s a deliberate choice to recognize inventors and authors properly have a property right in their creations and is the only right expressly protected in the base text of the Constitution, before the Bill of Rights was added...
Deleting all IP law is like banning free speech to stop misinformation — it might narrowly accomplish its goal, but only by destroying what we ought to be protecting."
John Besley , The Independent; Sir Elton John ‘incredibly betrayed’ by Government’s path on copyright law
"Sir Elton John described the Government as “absolute losers” and said he felt “incredibly betrayed” after calls by peers to amend the Data (Use and Access) Bill to include greater copyright protections against artificial intelligence (AI) were resisted.
Earlier this week, the House of Lords supported an amendment designed to ensure copyright holders would have to give permission over whether their work was used, and in turn, see what aspects had been taken, by who and when.
MPs voted 297 to 168, majority 129, to disagree with this change on Wednesday evening, which means the stand-off between the two Houses over the wording of the Bill continues."
JARED GANS, The Hill ; Democrats press Trump on Copyright Office chief’s removal
"A half dozen Senate Democrats are pressing President Trump over his firing of the head of the U.S. Copyright Office, arguing that the move is illegal.
“It threatens the longstanding independence and integrity of the Copyright Office, which plays a vital role in our economy,” the members said in the letter. “You are acting beyond your power and contrary to the intent of Congress as you seek to erode the legal and institutional independence of offices explicitly designed to operate outside the reach of partisan influence.” ...
The head of the Copyright Office is responsible for shaping federal copyright policy, and the senators argued the role is particularly crucial as the country confronts issues concerning the intersection of copyright law and technologies like artificial intelligence."
Simon Sherwood, The Register; US Copyright Office found AI companies sometimes breach copyright. Next day its boss was fired
"The head of the US Copyright Office has reportedly been fired, the day after agency concluded that builders of AI models use of copyrighted material went beyond existing doctrines of fair use.
The office’s opinion on fair use came in a draft of the third part of its report on copyright and artificial intelligence. The first part considered digital replicas and the second tackled whether it is possible to copyright the output of generative AI.
The office published the draft [PDF] of Part 3, which addresses the use of copyrighted works in the development of generative AI systems, on May 9th.
The draft notes that generative AI systems “draw on massive troves of data, including copyrighted works” and asks: “Do any of the acts involved require the copyright owners’ consent or compensation?”"
"As for how this ties into Musk (a Trump ally) and AI, Morelle linked to a pre-publication version of a U.S. Copyright Office report released this week that focuses on copyright and artificial intelligence. (In fact, it’s actually part three of a longer report.)
In it, the Copyright Office says that while it’s “not possible to prejudge” the outcome of individual cases, there are limitations on how much AI companies can count on “fair use” as a defense when they train their models on copyrighted content. For example, the report says research and analysis would probably be allowed.
“But making commercial use of vast troves of copyrighted works to produce expressive content that competes with them in existing markets, especially where this is accomplished through illegal access, goes beyond established fair use boundaries,” it continues.
The Copyright Office goes on to suggest that government intervention “would be premature at this time,” but it expresses hope that “licensing markets” where AI companies pay copyright holders for access to their content “should continue to develop,” adding that “alternative approaches such as extended collective licensing should be considered to address any market failure.”
AI companies including OpenAI currently face a number of lawsuits accusing them of copyright infringement, and OpenAI has also called for the U.S. government to codify a copyright strategy that gives AI companies leeway through fair use.
Musk, meanwhile, is both a co-founder of OpenAI and of a competing startup, xAI (which is merging with the former Twitter). He recently expressed support for Square founder Jack Dorsey’s call to “delete all IP law.”"
KATHERINE TULLY-MCMANUS , Politico; Trump fires top US copyright official
[Kip Currier: If the allegation below is correct -- that Musk or anyone could gain and/or be granted access to the copyrighted works that federal copyright filers are required to provide for deposit to the U.S. Copyright Office (i.e. the U.S. federal government), as a condition of receiving a federal copyright, and that Musk or anyone could then use these federally-deposited copyrighted works to train proprietary AI models without permission or payment to the owners of those federally-deposited copyrighted works -- this is a matter that must be reported on more widely and investigated by the U.S. Congress.]
[Excerpt]
"Rep. Joe Morelle, the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee which oversees the Library of Congress and U.S. Copyright Office, is alleging it is “no coincidence [Trump] acted less than a day after [Perlmutter] refused to rubber-stamp Elon Musk’s efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models.”
Perlmutter and her office issued a lengthy report about artificial intelligence that included some questions and concerns about the usage of copyrighted materials by AI technology, an industry which Musk is heavily involved in.
“This action once again tramples on Congress’s Article One authority and throws a trillion-dollar industry into chaos,” Morelle continued in a statement. “When will my Republican colleagues decide enough is enough?”"
Audrey Schumer, Variety; COPYRIGHTING AI-ASSISTED FILM AND TV COULD GET COMPLICATED
"For Hollywood and other creative industries, most of the debate about generative AI and copyright has emphasized the unlicensed use of copyrighted content to train AI models."
Cristina Criddle and Hannah Murphy, Financial Times; Meta lawsuit poses first big test of AI copyright battle
"The case, which has been brought by about a dozen authors including Ta-Nehisi Coates and Richard Kadrey, is centred on the $1.4tn social media giant’s use of LibGen, a so-called shadow library of millions of books, academic articles and comics, to train its Llama AI models. The ruling will have wide-reaching implications in the fierce copyright battle between artists and AI groups and is one of several lawsuits around the world that allege technology groups are using content without permission."
Mark MacCarthy , Brookings; Copyright alone cannot protect the future of creative work
"AI-generated content is nowhere near as good today as the output of skilled journalists, scriptwriters, videographers, photographers, commercial designers, and other creative workers. But the AI technology is getting there. Content producers will soon be able to use AI systems to generate at least some content that used to be generated without any AI assistance. Prompt engineers will work together with traditional content creators to guide new systems of content production. The promise of the new technology is that this output will be satisfactory and maybe even superior for a wide variety of purposes at a fraction of the cost."
