OpenAI Faces Early Appeal in First AI Copyright Suit From Coders; Bloomberg Law, September 30, 2024

 Isaiah Poritz , Bloomberg Law; OpenAI Faces Early Appeal in First AI Copyright Suit From Coders

"OpenAI Inc. and Microsoft Corp.‘s GitHub will head to the country’s largest federal appeals court to resolve their first copyright lawsuit from open-source programmers who claim the companies’ AI coding tool Copilot violates a decades-old digital copyright law.

Judge Jon S. Tigar granted the programmers’ request for a mid-case turn to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which must determine whether OpenAI’s copying of open-source code to train its AI model without proper attribution to the programmers could be a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act...

The programmers argued that Copilot fails to include authorship and licensing terms when it outputs code. Unlike other lawsuits against AI companies, the programmers didn’t allege that OpenAI and GitHub engaged in copyright infringement, which is different from a DMCA violation."

OpenAI Faces Early Appeal in First AI Copyright Suit From Coders; Bloomberg Law, September 30, 2024

Isaiah Poritz , Bloomberg Law; OpenAI Faces Early Appeal in First AI Copyright Suit From Coders

"The programmers argued that Copilot fails to include authorship and licensing terms when it outputs code. Unlike other lawsuits against AI companies, the programmers didn’t allege that OpenAI and GitHub engaged in copyright infringement, which is different from a DMCA violation."

USU's College of Humanities & Social Sciences Hosts Conference on Ethics of AI; Utah State University (USU), September 23, 2024

 Utah State University (USU); USU's College of Humanities & Social Sciences Hosts Conference on Ethics of AI

"AI’s emergence from the obscure to the unavoidable has come with many questions and concerns — some of which deal with how we can and should use it ethically.

To help answer some of these questions the USU Communication Studies and Philosophy Department and the Center for Anticipatory Intelligence hosted a conference.

They brought in scholars from a variety of disciplines to discuss these issues — with these experts coming from the University of Cambridge, New York University and Northeastern University, among others."

Gavin Newsom vetoes sweeping AI safety bill, siding with Silicon Valley; Politico, September 29, 2024

LARA KORTE and JEREMY B. WHITE, Politico; Gavin Newsom vetoes sweeping AI safety bill, siding with Silicon Valley

"Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a sweeping California bill meant to impose safety vetting requirements for powerful AI models, siding with much of Silicon Valley and leading congressional Democrats in the most high-profile fight in the Legislature this year."

AI could be an existential threat to publishers – that’s why Mumsnet is fighting back; The Guardian, September 28, 2024

Justine Roberts , The Guardian; AI could be an existential threat to publishers – that’s why Mumsnet is fighting back

"After nearly 25 years as a founder of Mumsnet, I considered myself pretty unshockable when it came to the workings of big tech. But my jaw hit the floor last week when I read that Google was pushing to overhaul UK copyright law in a way that would allow it to freely mine other publishers’ content for commercial gain without compensation.

At Mumsnet, we’ve been on the sharp end of this practice, and have recently launched the first British legal action against the tech giant OpenAI. Earlier in the year, we became aware that it was scraping our content – presumably to train its large language model (LLM). Such scraping without permission is a breach of copyright laws and explicitly of our terms of use, so we approached OpenAI and suggested a licensing deal. After lengthy talks (and signing a non-disclosure agreement), it told us it wasn’t interested, saying it was after “less open” data sources...

If publishers wither and die because the AIs have hoovered up all their traffic, then who’s left to produce the content to feed the models? And let’s be honest – it’s not as if these tech giants can’t afford to properly compensate publishers. OpenAI is currently fundraising to the tune of $6.5bn, the single largest venture capital round of all time, valuing the enterprise at a cool $150bn. In fact, it has just been reported that the company is planning to change its structure and become a for-profit enterprise...

I’m not anti-AI. It plainly has the potential to advance human progress and improve our lives in myriad ways. We used it at Mumsnet to build MumsGPT, which uncovers and summarises what parents are thinking about – everything from beauty trends to supermarkets to politicians – and we licensed OpenAI’s API (application programming interface) to build it. Plus, we think there are some very good reasons why these AI models should ingest Mumsnet’s conversations to train their models. The 6bn-plus words on Mumsnet are a unique record of 24 years of female interaction about everything from global politics to relationships with in-laws. By contrast, most of the content on the web was written by and for men. AI models have misogyny baked in and we’d love to help counter their gender bias.

But Google’s proposal to change our laws would allow billion-dollar companies to waltz untrammelled over any notion of a fair value exchange in the name of rapid “development”. Everything that’s unique and brilliant about smaller publisher sites would be lost, and a handful of Silicon Valley giants would be left with even more control over the world’s content and commerce."

US Trademark Office cancels Marvel, DC's 'Super Hero' marks; Reuters, September 26, 2024

Blake Brittain , Reuters; US Trademark Office cancels Marvel, DC's 'Super Hero' marks

"A U.S. Trademark Office tribunal has canceled a set of "Super Hero" trademarks jointly owned by comic giants Marvel and DC at the request of a London-based comic book artist, according to a Thursday order.

The USPTO's Trademark Trial and Appeal Board ruled for S.J. Richold's Superbabies Ltd after Disney's Marvel and Warner Bros' DC did not file an answer to Superbabies' request to invalidate the marks.

Spokespeople and attorneys for Marvel and DC did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Superbabies attorney Adam Adler of Reichman Jorgensen Lehman & Feldberg said in a statement that the ruling was "not just a win for our client but a victory for creativity and innovation."

"By establishing SUPER HEROES' place in the public domain, we safeguard it as a symbol of heroism available to all storytellers," Adler said."

Pulling Back the Silicon Curtain; The New York Times, September 10, 2024

 Dennis Duncan, The New York Times; Pulling Back the Silicon Curtain: 

Review of NEXUS: A Brief History of Information Networks From the Stone Age to AI, by Yuval Noah Harari

"In a nutshell, Harari’s thesis is that the difference between democracies and dictatorships lies in how they handle information...

The meat of “Nexus” is essentially an extended policy brief on A.I.: What are its risks, and what can be done? (We don’t hear much about the potential benefits because, as Harari points out, “the entrepreneurs leading the A.I. revolution already bombard the public with enough rosy predictions about them.”) It has taken too long to get here, but once we arrive Harari offers a useful, well-informed primer.

The threats A.I. poses are not the ones that filmmakers visualize: Kubrick’s HAL trapping us in the airlock; a fascist RoboCop marching down the sidewalk. They are more insidious, harder to see coming, but potentially existential. They include the catastrophic polarizing of discourse when social media algorithms designed to monopolize our attention feed us extreme, hateful material. Or the outsourcing of human judgment — legal, financial or military decision-making — to an A.I. whose complexity becomes impenetrable to our own understanding.

Echoing Churchill, Harari warns of a “Silicon Curtain” descending between us and the algorithms we have created, shutting us out of our own conversations — how we want to act, or interact, or govern ourselves...

“When the tech giants set their hearts on designing better algorithms,” writes Harari, “they can usually do it.”...

Parts of “Nexus” are wise and bold. They remind us that democratic societies still have the facilities to prevent A.I.’s most dangerous excesses, and that it must not be left to tech companies and their billionaire owners to regulate themselves."

Should You Be Allowed to Profit From A.I.-Generated Art?; The New York Times, September 27, 2024

 Kwame Anthony Appiah, The New York Times; Should You Be Allowed to Profit From A.I.-Generated Art?

[Excerpt]

"We attempt to attribute art whenever we can, and anything that’s only for purchase we either avoid or pay for. This particular piece seems to be available only in an Etsy shop, where the creator apparently uses A.I. prompts to generate images. The price is nominal: a few dollars. Yet I cannot help thinking that those who make A.I.-generated art are taking other artists’ work, essentially recreating it and then profiting from it. 

I’m not sure what the best move is...Name Withheld

From the Ethicist:

There’s a sense in which A.I. image generators — such as DALL-E 3, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion — make use of the intellectual property of the artists whose work they’ve been trained on. But the same is true of human artists. The history of art is the history of people borrowing and adapting techniques and tropes from earlier work, with occasional moments of deep originality...

Maybe you’re worried that A.I. image generators will undermine the value of human-made art. Such concerns have a long history. In his classic 1935 essay, ‘‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,’’ the critic Walter Benjamin pointed out that techniques for reproducing artworks have been invented throughout history. In antiquity, the Greeks had foundries for reproducing bronzes; in time, woodcuts were widely used to make multiple copies of images; etching, lithography and photography later added new possibilities. These technologies raised the question of what Benjamin called the ‘‘aura’’ of the individual artwork...

As forms of artificial intelligence grow increasingly widespread, we need to get used to so-called ‘‘centaur’’ models — collaborations between human and machine cognition."

Trump Loses Copyright Suit Over ‘Electric Avenue’ 2020 Campaign Video In Summary Judgement; TechDirt via Above The Law, September 27, 2024

TechDirt via Above The Law; Trump Loses Copyright Suit Over ‘Electric Avenue’ 2020 Campaign Video In Summary Judgement

"During what was essentially a multi-year advertisement for just how absolutely petty, stupid, and disingenuous a political system could possibly be, the 2020 American presidential election also featured a video sent out by the Trump campaign on social media that resulted in a copyright infringement lawsuit. You can see below a news clip that features the video, which is an admittedly fairly funny poke at his then rival, Joe Biden, but which also uses a healthy chunk of the Eddy Grant song Electric Avenue within it.

The Trump campaign used the music without permission. That appears to have pissed off Eddy Grant, who filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the Trump campaign as a result...

In this case, however, there is no defending this through venue licenses. The song wasn’t played in a venue at all. It was played in a campaign video tweeted out by the campaign. As a result, the Trump campaign’s defense was instead fair use. And, as I detailed in my original post above, the fair use defense in this case is fairly laughable.

The judge overseeing the case apparently agrees, having found for Eddy Grant on summary judgement."

Artist sues after US rejects copyright for AI-generated image; Reuters, September 26, 2024

  Blake Brittain, Reuters; Artist sues after US rejects copyright for AI-generated image

"Artist Jason M. Allen asked a Colorado federal court on Thursday to reverse a U.S. Copyright Office decision that rejected copyright protection for an award-winning image he created with artificial intelligence...

A Copyright Office tribunal affirmed the decision last year, finding the image as a whole was not copyrightable because it contained more than a minimal amount of AI-created material.

The office has previously rescinded copyrights for images that artist Kris Kashtanova created using Midjourney. It also rejected a copyright application for an image that computer scientist Stephen Thaler said his AI system created autonomously. Thaler has since appealed...

The case is Allen v. Perlmutter, U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, No. 1:24-cv-02665."

OpenAI, Microsoft, Amazon among first AI Pact signatories; Euronews, September 25, 2024

 Cynthia Kroet, Euronews; OpenAI, Microsoft, Amazon among first AI Pact signatories

"OpenAI, Microsoft and Amazon are among 100 companies who are the first to sign up to a voluntary alliance aiming to help usher in new AI legislation, the European Commission said today (25 September)...

The Commission previously said that some 700 companies have shown interest in joining the Pact – which involves voluntary preparatory commitments to help businesses get ready for the incoming AI Act...

The Pact supports industry's voluntary commitments related to easing the uptake of AI in organisations, identifying AI systems likely to be categorised as high-risk under the rules and promoting AI literacy.

In addition to these core commitments, more than half of the signatories committed to additional pledges, including ensuring human oversight, mitigating risks, and transparently labelling certain types of AI-generated content, such as deepfakes, the Commission said...

The AI Act, the world’s first legal framework that regulates AI models according to the risk they pose, entered into force in August."

Why Do People Like Elon Musk Love Donald Trump? It’s Not Just About Money.; The New York Times, September 25, 2024

  Chris Hughes, The New York Times; Why Do People Like Elon Musk Love Donald Trump? It’s Not Just About Money.

"Mr. Trump appeals to some Silicon Valley elites because they identify with the man. To them, he is a fellow victim of the state, unjustly persecuted for his bold ideas. Practically, he is also the shield they need to escape accountability. Mr. Trump may threaten democratic norms and spread disinformation; he could even set off a recession, but he won’t challenge their ability to build the technology they like, no matter the social cost...

As much as they want to influence Mr. Trump’s policies, they also want to strike back at the Biden-Harris administration, which they believe has unfairly targeted their industry.

More than any other administration in the internet era, President Biden and Ms. Harris have pushed tech companies toward serving the public interest...

Last year, Mr. Andreessen, whose venture capital firm is heavily invested in crypto, wrote a widely discussed “manifesto” claiming that enemy voices of “bureaucracy, vetocracy, gerontocracy” are opposed to the “pursuit of technology, abundance and life.” In a barely concealed critique of the Biden-Harris administration, he argued that those who believe in carefully assessing the impact of new technologies before adopting them are “deeply immoral.”

NSF and philanthropic partners invest more than $18M to prioritize ethical and societal considerations in the creation of emerging technologies; U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), September 23, 2024

 U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF); NSF and philanthropic partners invest more than $18M to prioritize ethical and societal considerations in the creation of emerging technologies

"The U.S. National Science Foundation announced an inaugural investment of more than $18 million to 44 multidisciplinary, multi-sector teams across the U.S. through the NSF Responsible Design, Development and Deployment of Technologies (NSF ReDDDoT) program. NSF ReDDDoT invests in the creation of technologies that promote the public's well-being and mitigate potential harms by seeking to ensure that ethical, legal, community and societal considerations are embedded in the lifecycle of technology's creation and use. NSF launched this program in collaboration with leading philanthropic partners including the Ford Foundation, the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation and Siegel Family Endowment.

"NSF is committed to creating mutually beneficial research collaborations among diverse partners who contribute their expertise and resources to accelerating technology innovation that positively addresses pressing national, societal and geostrategic challenges," said Erwin Gianchandani, assistant director for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships. "Through a robust public-private partnership with philanthropies, NSF's investment in ReDDDoT aims to ensure that TIP advances the design, development and deployment of new technologies responsibly. This investment is consistent with the 'CHIPS and Science Act of 2022,' in which Congress called upon TIP to invest in exactly this approach when pursuing the key technology areas listed in that law."

NSF awarded 30 teams Phase 1 funding: 21 teams will receive planning grants of up to $300,000 each for up to two years to facilitate collaborative transdisciplinary and multi-sector activities to plan for submission of larger proposals, while an additional nine teams will receive Phase 1 funding of up to $75,000 each to plan and host workshops designed to raise awareness and identify relevant approaches and needs in the key technology areas identified in the "CHIPS and Science Act of 2022."

Additionally, NSF awarded Phase 2 funding to 14 teams that demonstrated maturity in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, or natural and anthropogenic disaster prevention or mitigation, key technology areas in the statute that TIP emphasized for ReDDDoT funding. Each Phase 2 team will receive up to $1.5 million over three years to expand upon their identified experience in use-inspired and translational activities in responsible design, development and deployment of innovative technology.

The ReDDDoT program invited proposals from teams that examined and demonstrated the principles, methodologies and impacts associated with ethical, legal, community and societal considerations of technology's creation and use, especially those specified in the "CHIPS and Science Act of 2022."NSF anticipates issuing a second ReDDDoT funding opportunity in the future that will build on this round of funding to ensure ethical, legal, community, and societal considerations are embedded in the lifecycle of technology’s creation.

NSF ReDDDot Awardees

Awardees are grouped by award type and then listed in alphabetical order by organization. The full award list can be found on NSF Award Search webpage."

Mark Zuckerberg Is Done With Politics; The New York Times, September 24, 2024

 Theodore Schleifer and Mike Isaac, The New York Times; Mark Zuckerberg Is Done With Politics

"Instead of publicly engaging with Washington, Mr. Zuckerberg is repairing relationships with politicians behind the scenes. After the “Zuckerbucks” criticism, Mr. Zuckerberg hired Brian Baker, a prominent Republican strategist, to improve his positioning with right-wing media and Republican officials. In the lead-up to November’s election, Mr. Baker has emphasized to Mr. Trump and his top aides that Mr. Zuckerberg has no plans to make similar donations, a person familiar with the discussions said.

Mr. Zuckerberg has yet to forge a relationship with Vice President Kamala Harris. But over the summer, Mr. Zuckerberg had his first conversations with Mr. Trump since he left office, according to people familiar with the conversations."

Mark Zuckerberg Isn’t Done With Politics. His Politics Have Just Changed.; Mother Jones, September 24, 2024

  Tim Murphy, Mother Jones; Mark Zuckerberg Isn’t Done With Politics. His Politics Have Just Changed.

"On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that one of the world’s richest men had recently experienced a major epiphany. After bankrolling a political organization that supported immigration reform, espousing his support for social justice, and donating hundreds of millions of dollars to support local election workers during the 2020 election, “Mark Zuckerberg is done with politics.”

The Facebook founder and part-time Hawaiian feudal lord, according to the piece, “believed that both parties loathed technology and that trying to continue engaging with political causes would only draw further scrutiny to their company,” and felt burned by the criticism he has faced in recent years, on everything from the proliferation of disinformation on Facebook to his investment in election administration (which conservatives dismissively referred to as “Zuckerbucks”). He is mad, in other words, that people are mad at him, and it has made him rethink his entire theory of how the world works.

It’s an interesting piece, which identifies a real switch in how Zuckerberg—who along with his wife, Priscilla Chan, has made a non-binding pledge to give away a majority of his wealth by the end of his lifetime—thinks about his influence and his own ideology. But there’s a fallacy underpinning that headline: Zuckerberg isn’t done with politics. His politics have simply changed."

Meta Fails to Block Zuckerberg Deposition in AI Copyright Suit; Bloomberg Law, September 25, 2024

 Aruni Soni, Bloomberg Law; Meta Fails to Block Zuckerberg Deposition in AI Copyright Suit

"A federal magistrate judge opened the door to a deposition of Meta Platforms Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a copyright lawsuit over the tech company’s large language model, denying the social media giant’s bid for a protective order.

Magistrate Judge Thomas S. Hixson denied the request to block the deposition because the plaintiffs supplied enough evidence that Zuckerberg is the “chief decision maker and policy setter for Meta’s Generative AI branch and the development of the large language models at issue in this action,” he said in the order filed Tuesday in the US District Court for the Northern District."

OpenAI Training Data to Be Inspected in Authors’ Copyright Cases; Hollywood Reporter, September 24, 2024

 Winston Cho, Hollywood Reporter; OpenAI Training Data to Be Inspected in Authors’ Copyright Cases

"For the first time, OpenAI will provide access to its training data for review of whether copyrighted works were used to power its technology.

In a Tuesday filing, authors suing the Sam Altman-led firm and OpenAI indicated that they came to terms on protocols for inspection of the information. They’ll seek details related to the incorporation of their works in training datasets, which could be a battleground in the case that may help establish guardrails for the creation of automated chatbots...

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria at a hearing on Friday questioned whether the attorneys can adequately represent the writers.

“It’s very clear to me from the papers, from the docket and from talking to the magistrate judge that you have brought this case and you have not done your job to advance it,” Chhabria said, according to Politico. “You and your team have barely been litigating the case. That’s obvious… This is not your typical proposed class action. This is an important case. It’s an important societal issue. It’s important for your clients.”

New State Laws Are Fueling a Surge in Book Bans; The New York Times, September 23, 2024

 Elizabeth Harris , The New York Times; New State Laws Are Fueling a Surge in Book Bans

"Books have been challenged and removed from schools and libraries for decades, but around 2021, these instances began to skyrocket, fanned by a network of conservative groups and the spread on social media of lists of titles some considered objectionable...

PEN considers any book that has been removed from access to have been banned, even if the book is eventually put back...

The American Library Association also released a report on Monday based on preliminary data. The group gathers its own information, and relies on a different definition of what constitutes a book ban. For the library association, a book must be removed — not just temporarily, while it is reviewed — to count as being banned...

The library association and PEN America both emphasized that these numbers were almost certainly an undercount. Both groups rely on information from local news reports, but in many districts across the country, there is no education reporter keeping tabs."

PEN America: Books bans doubled in 2023-2024 school year, most from Florida, Iowa; Florida Times-Union, September 24, 2024

  C. A. Bridges, Florida Times-Union; PEN America: Books bans doubled in 2023-2024 school year, most from Florida, Iowa

"In the 2022-2023 school year, Florida led the nation in the surge of book challenges and bans, according to free expression advocacy group PEN America. This year, the number of bans has more than doubled.

Research by the nonprofit organization found more than 10,000 instances of book bans across the country, with 8,000 of them from Florida and Iowa, according to preliminary findings released Monday at the start of Banned Books Week. This was largely due to new state laws, PEN America's Kasey Meehan and Sabrina Baêta said.

Florida's HB 1069, which went into effect July 2023, required that any book challenged for "sexual conduct" must be removed during the review process and empowered parents and guardians to challenge books without providing ways for parents or guardians to defend them. That led to a "significant rise in book bans" during the 2023-2024 school year, PEN America said."

AI Art Copyright Stays Doubtful After Appeals Court Argument ; Bloomberg Law, September 19, 2024

 Kyle Jahner, Aruni Soni , Bloomberg Law; AI Art Copyright Stays Doubtful After Appeals Court Argument 

"The first federal appeals court battle over the boundaries of copyright law’s application to AI-generated works carries huge implications for creative industries given the rapid proliferation of the technology. The circumstances upon which copyright vests in work wholly or partly created by AI and who gets to control and enforce that right will hinge on interpretations of cases like Thaler’s."

American Library Association reveals preliminary data on 2024 book challenges; American Library Association (ALA), September 23, 2024

  American Library Association (ALA); American Library Association reveals preliminary data on 2024 book challenges

"New data shows a slowdown in challenge reports

The American Library Association has released preliminary data documenting attempts to censor books and materials in public, school, and academic libraries during the first eight months of 2024 in preparation for Banned Books Week (September 22-28, 2024).

Between January 1 and August 31, 2024, ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 414 attempts to censor library materials and services. In those cases, 1,128 unique titles were challenged. In the same reporting period last year, ALA tracked 695 attempts with 1,915 unique titles challenged. Though the number of reports to date has declined in 2024, the number of documented attempts to censor books continues to far exceed the numbers prior to 2020. Additionally, instances of soft censorship, where books are purchased but placed in restricted areas, not used in library displays, or otherwise hidden or kept off limits due to fear of challenges illustrate the impact of organized censorship campaigns on students’ and readers’ freedom to read. In some circumstances, books have been preemptively excluded from library collections, taken off the shelves before they are banned, or not purchased for library collections in the first place.

“As these preliminary numbers show, we must continue to stand up for libraries and challenge censorship wherever it occurs,” said American Library Association President Cindy Hohl. “We know library professionals throughout the country are committed to preserving our freedom to choose what we read and what our children read, even though many librarians face criticism and threats to their livelihood and safety. We urge everyone to join librarians in defending the freedom to read. We know people don’t like being told what they are allowed to read, and we’ve seen communities come together to fight back and protect their libraries and schools from the censors.”

The Office for Intellectual Freedom compiles data on book challenges from reports by library professionals in the field and from news stories published throughout the United States. Because many book challenges are not reported to the ALA or covered by the press, the 2024 data compiled by ALA represents only a snapshot of book censorship throughout the first eight months of the year. 

As ALA continues to document the harms of censorship, we celebrate those whose advocacy and support are helping to end censorship in our libraries."

Generative AI and Legal Ethics; JD Supra, September 20, 2024

 Craig Brodsky, Goodell, DeVries, Leech & Dann, LLP, JD Supra; Generative AI and Legal Ethics

 "In his scathing opinion, Cullen joined judges from New York Massachusetts and North Carolina, among others, by concluding that improper use of AI generated authorities may give rise to sanctions and disciplinary charges...

As a result, on July 29, 2024, the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional issued Formal Opinion 512 on Generative Artificial Intelligence Tools. The ABA Standing Committee issued the opinion primarily because GAI tools are a “rapidly moving target” that can create significant ethical issues. The committee believed it necessary to offer “general guidance for lawyers attempting to navigate this emerging landscape.”

The committee’s general guidance is helpful, but the general nature of Opinion 512 it underscores part of my main concern — GAI has a wide-ranging impact on how lawyers practice that will increase over time. Unsurprisingly, at present, GAI implicates at least eight ethical rules ranging from competence (Md. Rule 19-301.1) to communication (Md. Rule 19-301.4), to fees (Md. Rule 19-301.5), to confidentiality, (Md. Rule 19-301.6), to supervisory obligations (Md. Rule 19-305.1 and Md. Rule 305.3) to the duties of a lawyer before tribunal to be candid and pursue meritorious claims and defenses. (Md. Rules 19-303.1 and 19-303.3).

As a technological feature of practice, lawyers cannot simply ignore GAI. The duty of competence under Rule 19-301.1 includes technical competence, and GAI is just another step forward. It is here to stay. We must embrace it but use it smartly.

Let it be an adjunct to your practice rather than having Chat GPT write your brief. Ensure that your staff understands that GAI can be helpful, but that the work product must be checked for accuracy.

After considering the ethical implications and putting the right processes in place, implement GAI and use it to your clients’ advantage."

Digital Image Creation Using AI Risks Copyright Infringement; Bloomberg Law, September 16, 2024

Brian Moriarty , HBSR, Timothy Meagher . HBSR , Daniel Fleisher , HBSR, Bloomberg Law; Digital Image Creation Using AI Risks Copyright Infringement

"Generative artificial intelligence has radically transformed the world of digital images. Anyone seeking to make a website, a video, or any other visual media can quickly use an AI program to convert their ideas into a new image with help from a few text prompts. 

The image maker can do so at low cost and without the need to hire a digital artist to create the image. Copyright protection may not be available for the new creation (because a computer and not a human created the image). But the image maker may mistakenly believe that the final AI creation doesn’t infringe others’ copyrights because it’s a new image. This isn’t the case."

Indigenous Colombian coca company challenges Coca-Cola’s trademark; The Washington Post, September 15, 2024

 

María Luisa Paúl

 and 

Bryan Pietsch, The Washington Post; Indigenous Colombian coca company challenges Coca-Cola’s trademark

"An Indigenous business in Colombia, acting, it says, “in defense of the coca leaf,” is asking the government to revoke the beverage giant’s century-old trademark on the word “coca.”"

Paraguay Loves Mickey, Its Cartoon Mouse. Disney Doesn’t.; The New York Times, September 14, 2024

Laurence Blair,

Photographs by María Magdalena Arréllaga

, The New York Times; Paraguay Loves Mickey, Its Cartoon Mouse. Disney Doesn’t.

"Paraguayans are notoriously creative — some would say light-fingered — when it comes to intellectual property.

Factories churn out knockoff Nike, Lacoste, and Adidas clothing.Paraguay’s educational authorities warned last year that Harvard University Paraguay — in Ciudad del Este, the country’s second-largest city and a counterfeiting hot spot — was awarding bogus medical degrees. (The school has no connection to the more famous Harvard.)

Paraguay ranks 86th out of 125 countries in an index compiled by the Property Rights Alliance, a research institute based in Washington, scoring 1.7 out of 10 for copyright protection."

G20 nations agree to join efforts to fight disinformation and set AI guidelines; AP, September, 13, 2024

 GABRIELA SÁ PESSOA , AP; G20 nations agree to join efforts to fight disinformation and set AI guidelines

"Group of 20 leaders agreed Friday to join efforts to fight disinformation and set up an agenda on artificial intelligence as their governments struggle against the speed, scale and reach of misinformation and hate speech.

The ministers, who gathered this week in Maceio, the capital of the northeastern state of Alagoas, emphasized in a statement the need for digital platforms to be transparent and “in line with relevant policies and applicable legal frameworks.”

It is the first time in the G20’s history that the group recognizes the problem of disinformation and calls for transparency and accountability from digital platforms, João Brant, secretary for digital policy at the Brazilian presidency, told The Associated Press by phone.

G20 representatives also agreed to establish guidelines for developing artificial intelligence, calling for “ethical, transparent, and accountable use of AI,” with human oversight and compliance with privacy and human rights laws."

Even Free Libraries Come With a Cost; The National Law Review, September 13, 2024

 Anisa Noorassa of McDermott Will & Emery , The National Law Review; Even Free Libraries Come With a Cost

"The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed a district court’s judgment of copyright infringement against an internet book archive, holding that its free-to-access library did not constitute fair use of the copyrighted books. Hachette Book Group Inc. v. Internet Archive, Case No. 23-1260 (2d Cir. Sept. 4, 2024) (Menashi, Robinson, Kahn, JJ.).

Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House (collectively, the publishers) brought suit against Internet Archive alleging that its “Free Digital Library,” which loans copies of the publishers’ books without charge, violated the publishers’ copyrights. Internet Archive argued that its use of the publishers’ copyrighted material fell under the fair use exception to the Copyright Act because Internet Archive acquired physical books and digitized them for borrowing (much like a traditional library) and maintained a 1:1 ratio of borrowed material to physical copies except for a brief period during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The district court reviewed the four statutory fair use factors set forth in § 107 of the Copyright Act:

• The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes.
• The nature of the copyrighted work.
• The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole.
• The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The district court found that Internet Archive’s use of the works was not covered by the fair use exception because its use was non-transformative, was commercial in nature due to its solicitation of donations, and was disruptive of the market for e-book licenses. Internet Archive appealed.

The Second Circuit affirmed, addressing each factor in turn."