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."

Court: Training AI Model Based on Copyrighted Data Is Not Fair Use as a Matter of Law; The National Law Review, February 11, 2025

Joseph A. Meckes, Joseph Grasser of Squire Patton Boggs (US) LLP   - Global IP and Technology Law Blog,  The National Law Review; Court: Training AI Model Based on Copyrighted Data Is Not Fair Use as a Matter of Law

"In what may turn out to be an influential decision, Judge Stephanos Bibas ruled as a matter of law in Thompson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence that creating short summaries of law to train Ross Intelligence’s artificial intelligence legal research application not only infringes Thompson Reuters’ copyrights as a matter of law but that the copying is not fair use. Judge Bibas had previously ruled that infringement and fair use were issues for the jury but changed his mind: “A smart man knows when he is right; a wise man knows when he is wrong.”

At issue in the case was whether Ross Intelligence directly infringed Thompson Reuters’ copyrights in its case law headnotes that are organized by Westlaw’s proprietary Key Number system. Thompson Reuters contended that Ross Intelligence’s contractor copied those headnotes to create “Bulk Memos.” Ross Intelligence used the Bulk Memos to train its competitive AI-powered legal research tool. Judge Bibas ruled that (i) the West headnotes were sufficiently original and creative to be copyrightable, and (ii) some of the Bulk Memos used by Ross were so similar that they infringed as a matter of law...

In other words, even if a work is selected entirely from the public domain, the simple act of selection is enough to give rise to copyright protection."

U.S. Copyright Office Releases Publication Produced by Group of Economic Scholars Identifying the Economic Implications of Artificial Intelligence for Copyright Policy; U.S. Copyright Office, February 12, 2025

 U.S. Copyright Office, Issue No. 1062; U.S. Copyright Office Releases Publication Produced by Group of Economic Scholars Identifying the Economic Implications of Artificial Intelligence for Copyright Policy

"Today, the U.S. Copyright Office is releasing Identifying the Economic Implications of Artificial Intelligence for Copyright Policy: Context and Direction for Economic Research. The publication, produced by a group of economic scholars, discusses the economic issues at the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and copyright policy. The group engaged in several months of substantive discussions, consultation with technical experts, and research, culminating in a daylong roundtable event. Participants spent the subsequent months articulating and refining the roundtable discussions, resulting in today’s publication. The group’s goal was identifying the most consequential economic characteristics of AI and copyright and what factors may inform policy decisions. 

"Development of AI technology has meaningful implications for the economic frameworks of copyright policy, and economists have only just begun to explore those," said Copyright Office Chief Economist Brent Lutes. "The Office convened an economic roundtable on AI and copyright policy with experts to help expediate research and coordinate the research community. The goal of this group’s work is to provide the broader economic research community a structured and rigorous framework for considering economic evidence." 

This publication serves as a platform for articulating the ideas expressed by participants as part of the roundtable. All principal contributors submitted written materials summarizing the group’s prior discussions on a particular topic, with editorial support provided by the Office of the Chief Economist. The many ideas and views discussed in this project do not necessarily represent the views of every roundtable participant or their respective institutions. The U.S. Copyright Office does not take a position on these ideas for the purposes of this project."

UNESCO Holds Workshop on AI Ethics in Cuba; UNESCO, February 7, 2025

 UNESCO; UNESCO Holds Workshop on AI Ethics in Cuba

"During the joint UNESCO-MINCOM National Workshop "Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: Equity, Rights, Inclusion" in Havana, the results of the application of the Readiness Assessment Methodology (RAM) for the ethical development of AI in Cuba were presented.

Similarly, there was a discussion on the Ethical Impact Assessment (EIA), a tool aimed at ensuring that AI systems follow ethical rules and are transparent...

The meeting began with a video message from the Assistant Director-General for Social and Human Sciences, Gabriela Ramos, who emphasized that artificial intelligence already has a significant impact on many aspects of our lives, reshaping the way we work, learn, and organize society.

Technologies can bring us greater productivity, help deliver public services more efficiently, empower society, and drive economic growth, but they also risk perpetuating global inequalities, destabilizing societies, and endangering human rights if they are not safe, representative, and fair, and above all, if they are not accessible to everyone.

Gabriela RamosAssistant Director-General for Social and Human Sciences"

Meta staff torrented nearly 82TB of pirated books for AI training — court records reveal copyright violations; Tom's Hardware, February 9, 2025

 Jowi Morales

 , Tom's Hardware; Meta staff torrented nearly 82TB of pirated books for AI training — court records reveal copyright violations

"Facebook parent-company Meta is currently fighting a class action lawsuit alleging copyright infringement and unfair competition, among others, with regards to how it trained LLaMA. According to an X (formerly Twitter) post by vx-underground, court records reveal that the social media company used pirated torrents to download 81.7TB of data from shadow libraries including Anna’s Archive, Z-Library, and LibGen. It then used this information to train its AI models.

The evidence, in the form of written communication, shows the researchers’ concerns about Meta’s use of pirated materials. One senior AI researcher said way back in October 2022, “I don’t think we should use pirated material. I really need to draw a line here.” While another one said, “Using pirated material should be beyond our ethical threshold,” then they added, “SciHub, ResearchGate, LibGen are basically like PirateBay or something like that, they are distributing content that is protected by copyright and they’re infringing it.”"

OpenAI says DeepSeek ‘inappropriately’ copied ChatGPT – but it’s facing copyright claims too; The Conversation, February 4, 2025

Lea Frermann, Senior Lecturer in Natural Language Processing, The University of Melbourne, The University of Melbourne , Shaanan Cohney, Lecturer in Cybersecurity, The University of Melbourne, The Conversation; OpenAI says DeepSeek ‘inappropriately’ copied ChatGPT – but it’s facing copyright claims too

"Within days, DeepSeek’s app surpassed ChatGPT in new downloads and set stock prices of tech companies in the United States tumbling. It also led OpenAI to claim that its Chinese rival had effectively pilfered some of the crown jewels from OpenAI’s models to build its own. 

In a statement to the New York Times, the company said: 

We are aware of and reviewing indications that DeepSeek may have inappropriately distilled our models, and will share information as we know more. We take aggressive, proactive countermeasures to protect our technology and will continue working closely with the US government to protect the most capable models being built here.

The Conversation approached DeepSeek for comment, but it did not respond.

But even if DeepSeek copied – or, in scientific parlance, “distilled” – at least some of ChatGPT to build R1, it’s worth remembering that OpenAI also stands accused of disrespecting intellectual property while developing its models."

The public domain keeps culture vibrant. Why is it shrinking?; Vox, February 7, 2025

Jorge Just , Vox; The public domain keeps culture vibrant. Why is it shrinking?

"Copyrights keep getting longer. What does that mean for art?"

Google lifts its ban on using AI for weapons; BBC, February 5, 2025

 Lucy Hooker & Chris Vallance, BBC; Google lifts its ban on using AI for weapons

"Google's parent company has ditched a longstanding principle and lifted a ban on artificial intelligence (AI) being used for developing weapons and surveillance tools.

Alphabet has rewritten its guidelines on how it will use AI, dropping a section which previously ruled out applications that were "likely to cause harm".

In a blog post Google defended the change, arguing that businesses and democratic governments needed to work together on AI that "supports national security".

Experts say AI could be widely deployed on the battlefield - though there are fears about its use too, particularly with regard to autonomous weapons systems."

Trump Return-to-Office Order Faces Big Exemption at Patent Office; Bloomberg Law, January 27, 2025

Annelise Levy

 , Bloomberg Law; Trump Return-to-Office Order Faces Big Exemption at Patent Office

"The US Patent and Trademark Office told employees Friday the agency will fully comply with President Donald Trump’s return-to-office order, but the directive won’t override collective bargaining agreements covering most of its employees."

The US Copyright Office's new ruling on AI art is here - and it could change everything; ZDNet, February 3, 2025

David Gewirtz, Senior Contributing Editor, ZDNet; The US Copyright Office's new ruling on AI art is here - and it could change everything

"Last week, the US Copyright Office released its detailed report and comprehensive guidelines on the issue of copyright protection and AI-generated work.

For a government legal document, it is a fascinating exploration of the intersection of artificial intelligence and the very concept of authorship and creativity. The study's authors conduct a deep dive, taking in comments from the general public and experts alike, and producing an analysis of what it means to creatively author a work.

They then explore the issue of whether an AI-generated work versus an AI-assisted work is subject to copyright protection, and what that means not only for individual authors but also for the encouragement of creativity and innovation in society as a whole.

This is the second of what will be a three-part report from the Copyright Office. Part 1, published last year, explored digital replicas, using digital technology to "realistically replicate" someone's voice or appearance.

Part 3 is expected to be released later this year. It will focus on the issues of training AIs using copyrighted works, aspects of licensing, and how liability might be allocated in cases where a spectacular AI failure can be attributed to training (which sometimes results in litigation)."

Proud Boys Lose Control of Their Name to a Black Church They Vandalized; The New York Times, February 3, 2025

 Alan Feuer, The New York Times; Proud Boys Lose Control of Their Name to a Black Church They Vandalized

"The Proud Boys no longer have control over their own name.

Under a ruling by a Washington judge on Monday, the infamous far-right group was stripped of control over the trademark “Proud Boys” and was barred from selling any merchandise with either its name or its symbols without the consent of a Black church in Washington that its members vandalized. In June 2023, the church won a $2.8 million default judgment against the Proud Boys after the organization’s former leader, Enrique Tarrio, and several of his subordinates attacked it in a night of violence after a pro-Trump rally in December 2020.

The ruling by the judge, Tanya M. Jones Bosier of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, effectively means that Proud Boys chapters across the country can no longer legally use their own name or the group’s traditional symbols without the permission of the church that was attacked, the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church.

The ruling also clears the way for the church to try to seize any money that the Proud Boys might make by selling merchandise like hats or T-shirts emblazoned with their name or with any of their familiar logos, including a black and yellow laurel wreath."

DeepSeek has ripped away AI’s veil of mystique. That’s the real reason the tech bros fear it; The Observer via The Guardian, February 2, 2025

 Kenan Malik, The Observer via The Guardian ; DeepSeek has ripped away AI’s veil of mystique. That’s the real reason the tech bros fear it

"DeepSeek, sponsored by a Chinese hedge fund, is a notable achievement. Technically, though, it is no advance on large language models (LLMs) that already exist. It is neither faster nor “cleverer” than OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude and just as prone to “hallucinations” – the tendency, exhibited by all LLMs, to give false answers or to make up “facts” to fill gaps in its data. According to NewsGuard, a rating system for news and information websites, DeepSeek’s chatbot made false claims 30% of the time and gave no answers to 53% of questions, compared with 40% and 22% respectively for the 10 leading chatbots in NewsGuard’s most recent audit.

The figures expose the profound unreliability of all LLMs. DeepSeek’s particularly high non-response rate is likely to be the product of its censoriousness; it refuses to provide answers on any issue that China finds sensitive or about which it wants facts restricted, whether Tiananmen Square or Taiwan...

Nevertheless, for all the pushback, each time one fantasy prediction fails to materialise, another takes its place. Such claims derive less from technological possibilities than from political and economic needs. While AI technology has provided hugely important tools, capable of surpassing humans in specific fields, from the solving of mathematical problems to the recognition of disease patterns, the business model depends on hype. It is the hype that drives the billion-dollar investment and buys political influence, including a seat at the presidential inauguration."

Copyright Office suggests AI copyright debate was settled in 1965; Ars Technica, January 30, 2025

ASHLEY BELANGER , Ars Technica; Copyright Office suggests AI copyright debate was settled in 1965

"For stakeholders who have been awaiting this guidance for months, the Copyright Office report may not change the law, but it offers some clarity.

For some artists who hoped to push the Copyright Office to adapt laws, the guidelines may disappoint, leaving many questions about a world of possible creative AI uses unanswered. But while a case-by-case approach may leave some artists unsure about which parts of their works are copyrightable, seemingly common cases are being resolved more readily. According to the Copyright Office, after each decision, it gets easier to register AI works that meet similar standards for copyrightability. Perhaps over time, artists will grow more secure in how they use AI and whether it will impact their exclusive rights to distribute works.

That's likely cold comfort for the artist advocating for prompting alone to constitute authorship. One AI artist told Ars in October that being denied a copyright has meant suffering being mocked and watching his award-winning work freely used anywhere online without his permission and without payment. But in the end, the Copyright Office was apparently more sympathetic to other commenters who warned that humanity's progress in the arts could be hampered if a flood of easily generated, copyrightable AI works drowned too many humans out of the market...

Although the Copyright Office suggested that this week's report might be the most highly anticipated, Jernite said that Hugging Face is eager to see the next report, which officials said would focus on "the legal implications of training AI models on copyrighted works, including licensing considerations and the allocation of any potential liability.""

AI-assisted works can get copyright with enough human creativity, says US copyright office; AP, January 29, 2025

 MATT O’BRIEN, AP; AI-assisted works can get copyright with enough human creativity, says US copyright office

"Artists can copyright works they made with the help of artificial intelligence, according to a new report by the U.S. Copyright Office that could further clear the way for the use of AI tools in Hollywood, the music industry and other creative fields.

The nation’s copyright office, which sits in the Library of Congress and is not part of the executive branch, receives about half a million copyright applications per year covering millions of individual works. It has increasingly been asked to register works that are AI-generated.

And while many of those decisions are made on a case-by-case basis, the report issued Wednesday clarifies the office’s approach as one based on what the top U.S. copyright official describes as the “centrality of human creativity” in authoring a work that warrants copyright protections."