Yet Another AI Copyright Suit Against OpenAI Underscores the Autonomy-Automaton Divide; American Enterprise Institute, May 17, 2024

Michael Rosen , American Enterprise Institute; Yet Another AI Copyright Suit Against OpenAI Underscores the Autonomy-Automaton Divide

"In addition to previous litigation brought against artificial intelligence firms by the New York Times Company,  an alliance of prominent authors, and a group of creative artists, eight newspapers filed a complaint in district court in New York late last month, alleging that OpenAI and Microsoft are infringing their copyrighted articles by training generative AI products on their content and by churning out text that too closely resembles the copyrighted works.

And just like in the predecessor suits, the current litigation highlights a fundamental divide over AI that we’ve explored in this space on numerous occasions: While the newspapers regard ChatGPT and its ilk as mere automatons that mindlessly perform whatever operations they’re programmed to perform, OpenAI and Microsoft present their technology as genuinely autonomous (i.e. transformative and capable of transcending their rote programming.)"

Eight US newspapers sue OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement; Associated Press via The Guardian, April 30, 2024

 Associated Press via The Guardian; Eight US newspapers sue OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement

"A group of eight US newspapers is suing ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that the technology companies have been “purloining millions” of copyrighted news articles without permission or payment to train their artificial intelligence chatbots."

Photographer Sues Gannett for $34 Million For Copyright Infringement; PetaPixel, December 15, 2022

PESALA BANDARA, PetaPixel ; Photographer Sues Gannett for $34 Million For Copyright Infringement

"Photographer Stephanie Campbell filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against major media company Gannett and more than 220 Gannett news outlets on Friday, reports Rochester Beacon.

In the lawsuit, Campbell alleges that hundreds of Gannett’s news titles published her photo of former NFL coach Katie Sowers without seeking the photographer’s permission...

[Kip Currier: The photographs, as described in the article, would be registered with the U.S. Copyright Office as copyrightable subject matter, not with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which, as its eponymous name indicates, has jurisdiction over patents and trademarks.] Campbell registered the photographs of Sowers with the U.S. Patent and Trademarks office...

According to the Rochester Beacon, Campbell is seeking damages of up to $150,000 for each alleged infringement, a sum that, if each supposedly infringing publication used the Sowers photo only once, could see the photographer winning $34 million."

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex to receive confidential sum from UK newspaper for copyright infringement; CNN, January 5, 2022

Niamh Kennedy, CNN; Meghan, Duchess of Sussex to receive confidential sum from UK newspaper for copyright infringement

"The court found ANL infringed Meghan's copyright by publishing extracts of a handwritten letter she sent to her father in The Mail on Sunday newspaper and Mail Online website during hearings in January and May last year, the court order says.

The group is also set to pay the duchess £1 in nominal damages for misuse of private information, according to the court order.

On December 2, the Court of Appeal upheld a ruling that ANL had misused Meghan's private information through their publication of the letter, saying the Duchess had "had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of the letter.""

Tito's Tacos to change name following trademark tangle; Brattleboro Reformer, 10/3/16

Robert Audette, Brattleboro Reformer; Tito's Tacos to change name following trademark tangle:

"Victoroff requested that the Reformer "immediately remove the aforementioned infringing material from its website, immediately notify the source of the infringing content of this notice, inform them of their duty to remove the infringing material immediately, and notify them to cease any further posting of infringing material to The Brattleboro Reformer News website in the future."

The Reformer has declined to take down the picture on First Amendment grounds.

In a response, Fredric D. Rutberg, the president of New England Newspapers Inc., which owns the Reformer, refused to remove the picture from the Reformer's website.

"The photo in question depicts a local food vendor whose sign identifies his business as Tito's Tacos," wrote Rutberg. "While this use of the name Tito's Tacos may indeed infringe on your client's registered trademark, it is our opinion that the photo in question does not constitute an infringement of your client's trademark. At best it is a 'fair use' of trademarked material."

"Tito's greatly respects your newspaper's First Amendment rights of free speech," Victoroff responded in an email to Rutberg, "but the use of its trademarked name in the [photo and news story] seriously dilutes and erodes its trademark. ... Every day the Tito's Tacos family must defend and protect its trademark rights from death by 1,000 cuts or risk losing its name and trademark.""

Yes, the News Can Survive the Newspaper; New York Times, 9/4/16

Jim Rutenberg, New York Times; Yes, the News Can Survive the Newspaper:

"In this case, as the ad dollars that have long financed journalism vaporize into the electronic ether, you don’t know with any certainty that the best services that newspapers have provided — holding public officials to account, rooting out corruption — will live on.

If anything, today’s “efficiencies” may even set readers back by pumping out lowest-common-denominator nonsense or, at worst, disinformation.

Just look at what happened last week after that Goliath of the digital transformation, Facebook, pared back the team of “curators” and copy editors who oversaw the selection process for its “Trending Topics” feed. Instead, it gave more control over to an algorithm...

The Facebook experience wasn’t all that far off from the doomsday scenario John Oliver recently envisioned on his HBO show “Last Week Tonight.”...

Know-nothing press haters may say that news organizations are going out of business because the public is shunning them, but that’s not the case at all. Through online exposure, newspapers are reaching more people than ever. The problem is how they make money. Circulation for physical newspapers is declining, and so is print advertising; digital ads remain far less profitable. The trick is finding a way to make up the lost revenue."

Sydney Morning Herald Faces Uncertain Print Future in Australia; New York Times, 8/17/16

Keith Bradsher and Michelle Innis, New York Times; Sydney Morning Herald Faces Uncertain Print Future in Australia:

"Kate McClymont, 58, has been breaking news at The Sydney Morning Herald for decades. One of the newspaper’s marquee journalists, Ms. McClymont appears in the paper’s ads.

“We have been holding the powerful in this city to account for a long time,” Ms. McClymont said.

Most recently, she pursued a state government minister, Eddie Obeid, uncovering how his private businesses were improperly benefiting from his public role. Mr. Obeid was found guilty in June of misusing his public office. He will soon face a second court case over mining leases he obtained from the state government.

“We have shone a light where crooks would prefer places remained dark,” Ms. McClymont said. “I hate the idea of people getting away with anything.”

“It is bad for democracy,” she added, “if this voice is diminished in any way.”"

John Oliver’s newspaper rant hits a nerve: “We’ve watched it being not-so-slowly destroyed by forces beyond our control”; Salon, 8/10/16

Scott Timberg, Salon; John Oliver’s newspaper rant hits a nerve: “We’ve watched it being not-so-slowly destroyed by forces beyond our control” :

"So part of what’s interesting about Oliver’s bit — which looked at both the causes of the decline as well as the effects, with his usual combination of hyperventilating moralism and comic exaggeration — is that some seem frustrated with it. And not just people who hate the press, but people who value what it does.

The most visible of these criticisms so far has come from the president of the Newspaper Association of America, who praised the segment’s opening. “But making fun of experiments,” David Chavern wrote, “and pining away for days when classified ads and near-monopolistic positions in local ad markets funded journalism is pointless and ultimately harmful.”

Sullivan, who was once the executive editor of the Buffalo News and the public editor of the New York Times, hit back sharply in a Post piece:

Actually, no. What Oliver did was precisely nail everything that’s been happening in the industry that Chavern represents: The shrinking staffs, the abandonment of important beats, the love of click bait over substance, the deadly loss of ad revenue, the truly bad ideas that have come to the surface out of desperation, the persistent failures to serve the reading public."

"Tablet v. Newspaper"; Bizarro, 7/11/16

Dan Piraro, Bizarro:

"Tablet v. Newspaper"

How the internet has all but destroyed the market for films, music and newspapers; Observer via Guardian, 8/14/11

Robert Levine, Observer via Guardian; How the internet has all but destroyed the market for films, music and newspapers:

"As pressure builds to enforce copyright law online, technology companies and the activists they support have started to argue that any attempt to block pirate sites will "break the internet", as though it were an iPhone teetering on the edge of a table. The truth is that the internet is broken already: it's simply too chaotic to provide the infrastructure for a 21st-century economy. This has to change, before newspapers and film suffer declines like that of the music industry. Technology companies have long lectured creators on the need to adapt to a changing changing digital world. It would be a shame if they couldn't heed their own advice.

Robert Levine is the author of Free Ride: How the Internet is Destroying the Culture Business and How the Culture Business can Fight Back"

[Podcast] Should Newspapers Charge for Content Online?; NPR's On the Media, 7/16/10

[Podcast] NPR's On the Media; Should Newspapers Charge for Content Online?:

"Should newspapers put up paywalls? Pro-paywallers, like Rupert Murdoch, say absolutely! Newspapers must charge for costly reporting in order to survive! Anti-paywallers argue that papers can't afford to shut out the open and free web. Alan Murray of the (paywall-ed) Wall Street Journal and Alan Rusbridger, editor of the (free) Guardian, discuss."

http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2010/07/16/03

Murdoch could block Google searches entirely; Guardian, 11/09/09

Bobbie Johnson, Guardian; Murdoch could block Google searches entirely:

"Rupert Murdoch says he will remove stories from Google's search index as a way to encourage people to pay for content online.

In an interview with Sky News Australia, the mogul said that newspapers in his media empire – including the Sun, the Times and the Wall Street Journal – would consider blocking Google entirely once they had enacted plans to charge people for reading their stories on the web.

In recent months, Murdoch his lieutenants have stepped up their war of words with Google, accusing it of "kleptomania" and acting as a "parasite" for including News Corp content in its Google News pages. But asked why News Corp executives had not chosen to simply remove their websites entirely from Google's search indexes – a simple technical operation – Murdoch said just such a move was on the cards.

"I think we will, but that's when we start charging," he said...

Murdoch added that he did not agree with the idea that search engines fell under "fair use" rules - an argument many aggregator websites use as part of their legal justification for reproducing excerpts of news stories online.

"There's a doctrine called fair use, which we believe to be challenged in the courts and would bar it altogether... but we'll take that slowly.""

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/09/murdoch-google

French Papers Aim at Younger Readers; New York Times, 10/28/09

Eric Pfanner, New York Times; French Papers Aim at Younger Readers:

"Newspapers have tried many things to stave off a seemingly relentless decline in readers. Now France is pushing forward with a novel approach: giving away papers to young readers in an effort to turn them into regular customers.

The government Tuesday detailed plans of a project called “My Free Newspaper,” under which 18- to 24-year-olds will be offered a free, yearlong subscription to a newspaper of their choice.
“Winning back young readers is essential for the financial survival of the press, and for its civic dimension,” the culture minister, Frédéric Mitterrand, said...

While newspapers nearly everywhere in the developed world are in crisis, hurt by an advertising slump and readers’ defection to the Internet, the problems are particularly pronounced in France. On a per-capita basis, only about half as many papers are sold as in Britain or Germany, according to the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers in Paris.

Readership in France is especially low among young people. According to a government study, only 10 percent of those aged 15 to 24 read a paid-for newspaper daily in 2007, down from 20 percent a decade earlier."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/business/media/28papers.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=free%20newspapers%20france&st=cse

AP setting up tracking system for Web content; Associated Press, 7/23/09

Michael Liedtke via Associated Press; AP setting up tracking system for Web content:

"The Associated Press is moving ahead with plans for a system to detect unlicensed use of its content and potentially create new ways for the 163-year-old news cooperative and other media to make more money on the Internet.

As part of a strategy approved Thursday by the AP's board, the cooperative will start by bundling its text stories in an "informational wrapper" that will include a built-in beacon to monitor where stories go on the Internet.

The beacon is meant to be a policing device aimed at deterring Web sites from posting AP content without paying licensing fees. The AP and its member newspapers contend unlicensed use of their material is costing them tens of millions of dollars in potential ad revenue...

Although the AP's new system is set up to guard copyrights, it could also raise privacy concerns."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ivcsLigqu-EzL9UftRBGenALpzEgD99KEKH02

Future of Newspapers: Profitless? Go Wireless; Wired's Duel Perspectives Blog, 7/14/09

Douglas Wolk via Wired's Duel Perspectives Blog; Future of Newspapers: Profitless? Go Wireless:

"The Wall Street Journal's publisher Les Hinton has called Google a "digital vampire," but even his paper, one of the last holdouts of subscription-based online content, has made its articles' full text accessible via Google searches. Using free content as bait for paying customers doesn't work for newspapers. And the revenue from internet advertising is less a stream than a dribble — nowhere near enough to support a robust paper (or paperless paper) on its own.

Still, there's a crucial distinction that might yet save news organizations. Users are pretty clearly uninterested in paying for content on the open internet, but what they are, in practice, willing to pay for is mobile content...

One possible future of news as a commodity is hyperlocal information — the sort of thing that's already becoming popularized by services like Yelp, whose incarnation as an iPhone app offers directions to nearby restaurants and services, complete with with user reviews."

http://www.wired.com/dualperspectives/article/news/2009/07/dp_newspaper_wired0714

Copyright Challenge for Sites That Excerpt, The New York Times, 3/1/09

Via The New York Times: Copyright Challenge for Sites That Excerpt:

"Generally, the excerpts have been considered legal, and for years they have been welcomed by major media companies, which were happy to receive links and pass-along traffic from the swarm of Web sites that regurgitate their news and information.

But some media executives are growing concerned that the increasingly popular curators of the Web that are taking large pieces of the original work — a practice sometimes called scraping — are shaving away potential readers and profiting from the content.

With the Web’s advertising engine stalling just as newspapers are under pressure, some publishers are second-guessing their liberal attitude toward free content."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/business/media/02scrape.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=copyright&st=cse

Copyright claim to university's name `baffling', Toronto Star, 11/20/08

Via Toronto Star: Copyright claim to university's name `baffling', Councillor for Oshawa, Durham, has threatened newspapers over technology school:

"Just as the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Oshawa looks for a new name, a city councillor claims he owns the current one.

Robert Lutczyk, who sits on both the Oshawa and Durham Region councils, registered a copyright for "University of Ontario Institute of Technology" in 2005 and has recently forbidden several newspapers from printing the phrase under threat of legal action.

He's also registered "Medical School in Oshawa" and "Medical School at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology," neither of which exist...

Intellectual property lawyer Ziad Katul said the university itself has registered a trademark with UOIT and a slogan, which it owns. Lutczyk's copyright does not prevent the school, or the media, from using the name, he said."

http://www.thestar.com/article/540168