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."

How judges, not politicians, could dictate America’s AI rules; MIT Technology Review, July 17, 2023

Melissa Heikkilä, MIT Technology Review; How judges, not politicians, could dictate America’s AI rules

"It’s becoming increasingly clear that courts, not politicians, will be the first to determine the limits on how AI is developed and used in the US."

Rise of the machines: Copyright in a world of AI; Phoenix Business Journal, April 17, 2023

Daniel Restrepo – Fennemore, Phoenix Business Journal; Rise of the machines: Copyright in a world of AI

"Recognizing the blend of human and automated works

In remedying these conflicts, courts have a few options before them. Courts can declare all works using AI fall into the public domain on the grounds that they do not meet the creative, original or human-created requirements, or they could simply grant AI works copyright protection as a matter of course. However, the former would disincentivize AI development and the latter would disincentivize human creativity. 

The third and more likely solution is somewhere in the middle, granting limited protection in AI works based on the degree of human involvement. The Copyright Office has recently taken this approach regarding an application for the comic book “Zarya of the Dawn,” granting rights to the human author’s writing and arrangement of AI-generated drawings, but not to the AI drawings themselves. This gradient, while perhaps frustrating to those who want greater clarity, is useful in determining the rights in the final product."

China’s Newest Weapon to Nab Western Technology—Its Courts; The Wall Street Journal, February 20, 2023

Stu Woo  and Daniel Michaels, The Wall Street Journal; China’s Newest Weapon to Nab Western Technology—Its Courts

Rulings nullify patents in industries it deems important, including technology, pharmaceuticals and rare-earth minerals

"The growing conflict between China and the U.S. extends from computer-chip factories to a suspected spy balloon over American skies. Running through it all is a struggle for technological superiority.

China has striven for years to develop cutting-edge technologies, in part through heavy spending on research. Now, according to Western officials and executives, it also has mobilized its legal system to pry technology from other nations.

Officials in the U.S. and European Union accuse China of using its courts and patent panels to undermine foreign intellectual-property rights and help Chinese businesses. They say China is focusing such efforts on industries it deems important, including technology, pharmaceuticals and rare-earth minerals."

EFF Says No to So-Called “Moral Rights” Copyright Expansion; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), March 30, 2017

Kerry Sheehan and Kit Walsh, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF): 

EFF Says No to So-Called “Moral Rights” Copyright Expansion

"The fight over moral rights, particularly the right of Integrity, is ultimately one about who gets to control the meaning of a particular work. If an author can prevent a use they perceive as a “prejudicial distortion” of their work, that author has the power to veto others’ attempts to contest, reinterpret, criticize, or draw new meanings from those works...

A statutory right of attribution could also interfere with privacy protective measures employed by online platforms. Many platforms strip identifying metadata from works on their platforms to protect their users' privacy, If doing so were to trigger liability for violating an author’s right of attribution, platforms would likely be chilled from protecting their users’ privacy in this way.

For centuries, American courts have grappled with how to address harm to reputation without impinging on the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment. And as copyright’s scope has expanded in recent decades, the courts have provided the safeguards that partially mitigate the harm of overly broad speech regulation."