New blog post: Is China leading the next music disruption? Are the Chinese AI music platforms Mureka and Melodio benefiting from a calculated disregard for copyright? But is fair use the answer/

Mureka can generate music from “reference tracks”, an uploaded track or a YouTube link provided by the user, effectively making the user complicit by crowdsourcing training data. Are they going the way of Suno and Udio?

https://www.kyokokitamura.com/is-china-leading-the-next-music-disruption/
#music #musicbusiness #copyright #AI #fairuse #Melodio

Big tech companies want total control but opt-out should be the way to go:

"OpenAI and Google have rejected the government’s preferred approach to solve the dispute about artificial intelligence and copyright.

In February almost every UK daily newspaper gave over its front page and website to a campaign to stop tech giants from exploiting the creative industries.

The government’s plan, which has prompted protests from leading figures in the arts, is to amend copyright law to allowdevelopers to train their AI models on publicly available content for commercial use without consent from rights holders, unless they opt out.

However, OpenAI has called for a broader copyright exemption for AI, rejecting the opt-out model."

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/technology-uk/article/google-openai-reject-copyright-plan-bnnzztts9

Training #AI Using ‘Pirated’ Content Can Be #FairUse, Law Professors Argue - https://torrentfreak.com/training-ai-using-pirated-content-can-be-fair-use-law-professors-argue-250402/ " if the goal is to create a new and 'transformative' tool. "

Training AI Using ‘Pirated’ Content Can Be Fair Use, Law Professors Argue

https://torrentfreak.com/training-ai-using-pirated-content-can-be-fair-use-law-professors-argue-250402/

"The Third Circuit should affirm the ruling, preferably on the alternative ground that standards incorporated into law are necessarily promoted to the public domain. The internet has democratized access to law, making it easier than ever for the public —from journalists to organizers to safety professionals to ordinary concerned citizens —to understand, comment on, and share the myriad regulations that bind us. That work is particularly essential where those regulations are crafted by private parties and made mandatory by regulators with limited public oversight and increasingly limited staffing. Copyright law should not be read to impede it.

The Supreme Court has explained that “every citizen is presumed to know the law, and it needs no argument to show that all should have free access” to it. Apparently, it needs some argument after all, but it is past time for the debate to end."

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/03/eff-urges-third-circuit-join-legal-chorus-no-one-owns-law

"The AI landscape is in danger of being dominated by large companies with deep pockets. These big names are in the news almost daily. But they’re far from the only ones – there are dozens of AI companies with fewer than 10 employees trying to build something new in a particular niche.

This bill demands that creators of any AI model–even a two-person company or a hobbyist tinkering with a small software build– identify copyrighted materials used in training. That requirement will be incredibly onerous, even if limited just to works registered with the U.S. Copyright Office. The registration system is a cumbersome beast at best–neither machine-readable nor accessible, it’s more like a card catalog than a database–that doesn’t offer information sufficient to identify all authors of a work, much less help developers to reliably match works in a training set to works in the system.

Even for major tech companies, meeting these new obligations would be a daunting task. For a small startup, throwing on such an impossible requirement could be a death sentence. If A.B. 412 becomes law, these smaller players will be forced to devote scarce resources to an unworkable compliance regime instead of focusing on development and innovation. The risk of lawsuits—potentially from copyright trolls—would discourage new startups from even attempting to enter the field."

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/03/californias-ab-412-bill-could-crush-startups-and-cement-big-tech-ai-monopoly

If I record myself reading a copyrighted book and share the recording with some friends (for free), is that copyright infringement?

If so, can I claim fair use by, idk, dressing up in a funny outfit or something and turning the reading into a performance art piece, which I then record and share?

Is it copyright infringement to extract the audio from said recording of such a performance art piece and share that? There must be a legal way to do this...

Sam Altman asks #Trump to grant #OpenAI blanket permissions to steal everyone's copyrighted works so he can train his #AI. He raises the threat of China AI dominance as the bogeyman.
https://futurism.com/openai-over-copyrighted-work
#copyright #FairUse #AIhype #SamAltman

"Anyone at an AI company who stops to think for half a second should be able to recognize they have a vampiric relationship with the commons. While they rely on these repositories for their sustenance, their adversarial and disrespectful relationships with creators reduce the incentives for anyone to make their work publicly available going forward (freely licensed or otherwise). They drain resources from maintainers of those common repositories often without any compensation. They reduce the visibility of the original sources, leaving people unaware that they can or should contribute towards maintaining such valuable projects. AI companies should want a thriving open access ecosystem, ensuring that the models they trained on Wikipedia in 2020 can be continually expanded and updated. Even if AI companies don’t care about the benefit to the common good, it shouldn’t be hard for them to understand that by bleeding these projects dry, they are destroying their own food supply.

And yet many AI companies seem to give very little thought to this, seemingly looking only at the months in front of them rather than operating on years-long timescales. (Though perhaps anyone who has observed AI companies’ activities more generally will be unsurprised to see that they do not act as though they believe their businesses will be sustainable on the order of years.)

It would be very wise for these companies to immediately begin prioritizing the ongoing health of the commons, so that they do not wind up strangling their golden goose. It would also be very wise for the rest of us to not rely on AI companies to suddenly, miraculously come to their senses or develop a conscience en masse.

Instead, we must ensure that mechanisms are in place to force AI companies to engage with these repositories on their creators' terms."

https://www.citationneeded.news/free-and-open-access-in-the-age-of-generative-ai/

#OpenAI declares #AI race “over” if #training on #copyrighted works isn’t fair use

OpenAI is hoping that Donald Trump's AI Action Plan, due out this July, will settle #copyright debates by declaring #AItraining fair use—paving the way for AI companies' unfettered access to training data that OpenAI claims is critical to defeat #China in the AI race.
#fairuse #Trump

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/03/openai-urges-trump-either-settle-ai-copyright-debate-or-lose-ai-race-to-china/

"#OpenAI is hoping that Trump's AI Action Plan, due out this July, will settle copyright debates by declaring AI training fair use—paving the way for AI companies' unfettered access to training data that OpenAI claims is critical to defeat China in the AI race.
Currently, courts are mulling whether AI training is #fairuse, as rights holders say that AI models trained on creative works threaten to replace them in markets and water down humanity's creative output overall."
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/03/openai-urges-trump-either-settle-ai-copyright-debate-or-lose-ai-race-to-china/

The goal is correct but the justification is extremely flawed and hypocrite. A company called OpenAI should share way more code and sources to the general public that what it currently shares. And that's why the USA is starting to loose the AI race.

"OpenAI is hoping that Donald Trump's AI Action Plan, due out this July, will settle copyright debates by declaring AI training fair use—paving the way for AI companies' unfettered access to training data that OpenAI claims is critical to defeat China in the AI race.

Currently, courts are mulling whether AI training is fair use, as rights holders say that AI models trained on creative works threaten to replace them in markets and water down humanity's creative output overall.

OpenAI is just one AI company fighting with rights holders in several dozen lawsuits, arguing that AI transforms copyrighted works it trains on and alleging that AI outputs aren't substitutes for original works."

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/03/openai-urges-trump-either-settle-ai-copyright-debate-or-lose-ai-race-to-china

OpenAI declares AI race "over" if training on copyrighted works isn't fair use

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/03/openai-urges-trump-either-settle-ai-copyright-debate-or-lose-ai-race-to-china/

“In a recent decision…on the use of copyrighted texts for AI (but not generative AI) training, the Delaware District Court…held that a #FairUse defence was unsuccessful on a summary judgment motion for #copyright infringement.”

https://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2025/02/delaware-court-finds-fair-use-defence.html

Only the workers' movement can fight automation. Copyright law was made for capitalists and not for workers. Artists have to understand that, first and foremost, they are workers like the rest of human beings who need to work in order to survive. They don't live on a heavenly altar, above worldly concerns.

"The launch of ChatGPT and other deep learning quickly led to a flurry of lawsuits against model developers. Legal theories vary, but most are rooted in copyright: plaintiffs argue that use of their works to train the models was infringement; developers counter that their training is fair use. Meanwhile developers are making as many licensing deals as possible to stave off future litigation, and it’s a sound bet that the existing litigation is an elaborate scramble for leverage in settlement negotiations.

These cases can end one of three ways: rightsholders win, everybody settles, or developers win. As we’ve noted before, we think the developers have the better argument. But that’s not the only reason they should win these cases: while creators have a legitimate gripe, expanding copyright won’t protect jobs from automation. A win for rightsholders or even a settlement could also lead to significant harm, especially if it undermines fair use protections for research uses or artistic protections for creators. In this post and a follow-up, we’ll explain why. "

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/02/copyright-and-ai-cases-and-consequences

"Notably, Judge Bibas ruled in Thomson Reuters’ favor on the question of fair use. The fair use doctrine is a key component of how AI companies are seeking to defend themselves against claims that they used copyrighted materials illegally. The idea underpinning fair use is that sometimes it’s legally permissible to use copyrighted works without permission—for example, to create parody works, or in noncommercial research or news production. When determining whether fair use applies, courts use a four-factor test, looking at the reason behind the work, the nature of the work (whether it’s poetry, nonfiction, private letters, et cetera), the amount of copyrighted work used, and how the use impacts the market value of the original. Thomson Reuters prevailed on two of the four factors, but Bibas described the fourth as the most important, and ruled that Ross “meant to compete with Westlaw by developing a market substitute.”"

https://www.wired.com/story/thomson-reuters-ai-copyright-lawsuit/

I don't understand how people can be so sympathetic towards record labels and music publishers. As the owners - and not the authors! - of copyrighted works, they are most often mere parasites. Pure rent-seeking entities that seek to extract licenses (rents) from every online use of a copyrighted work. As such, historically they've been against any effort in favor of democratizing access to culture and knowledge. They should be denounced as censors and feudal lords.

"In a major win for creator communities, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has once again handed video streaming site Vimeo a solid win in its long-running legal battle with Capitol Records and a host of other record labels.

The labels claimed that Vimeo was liable for copyright infringement on its site, and specifically that it can’t rely on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s safe harbor because Vimeo employees “interacted” with user-uploaded videos that included infringing recordings of musical performances owned by the labels. Those interactions included commenting on, liking, promoting, demoting , or posting them elsewhere on the site. The record labels contended that these videos contained popular songs, and it would’ve been obvious to Vimeo employees that this music was unlicensed.

But as EFF explained in an amicus brief filed in support of Vimeo, even rightsholders themselves mistakenly demand takedowns."

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/second-circuit-rejects-record-labels-attempt-rewrite-dmca

"Controversies about new and unexpected uses of copyrighted works enabled by technological advances are far from new; they continue to play an integral part in the development of modern copyright law. This Article revisits numerous disputes over uses of in-copyright works enabled by disruptive technologies since the 1970s. These disputes involved copying of research and educational materials, home video and audio taping, and storage and processing of digital copies for the purpose of developing search engines and other research tools. Tracing the evolution of the concept of market harm and the role it has played in copyright fair use cases involving new technologies, this Article lays out the arguments about market effects—harmful and beneficial effects, as well as the requirements of proof—that have been presented in the courts and debated in Congress. The Article then assesses the current landscape of generative AI copyright litigation. Insights gained from the past can be instrumental in thinking about conflicts involving generative AI, as well as any future technologies that are new, innovative, and disruptive."

https://www.uclalawreview.org/fair-use-defenses-in-disruptive-technology-cases/

#music #playlist #peertube #mashup #parody #remix #fairuse #thelivingtombstone #tlt #silvahound #eminem #rihanna #beberexha #bebe #rexha #shawnmendes #shawn #mendes #davidguetta #david #guetta #afrojack #nickiminaj #nicki #minaj #thechainsmokers #chainsmokers #justinbieber #justin #bieber #adele #kesha
The Living Tombstone if he produced for popular artists | a inst + voc mashup playlist | vol. 1

https://makertube.net/w/wFTrMnD91ZrtPASa54yMVb

It’s critical that copyright be balanced with limitations that support users’ rights, and perhaps no limitation is more important than fair use. Critics, humorists, artists, and activists all must have rights to re-use and re-purpose source material, even when it’s copyrighted.

Yesterday, EFF weighed in on another case that could shape the future of our fair use rights. In Sedlik v. Von Drachenberg, a Los Angeles tattoo artist created a tattoo based on a well-known photograph of Miles Davis taken by photographer Jeffrey Sedlik. A jury found that Von Drachenberg, the tattoo artist, did not infringe the photographer’s copyright because her version was different from the photo; it didn’t meet the legal threshold of “substantially similar.” After the trial, the judge in the case considered other arguments brought by Sedlik after the trial and upheld the jury’s findings.

On appeal, Sedlik has made arguments that, if upheld, could narrow fair use rights for everyone. The appeal brief suggests that only secondary users who make “targeted” use of a copyrighted work have strong fair use defenses, relying on an incorrect reading of the Supreme Court’s decision in Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith."

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/12/eff-tells-appeals-court-keep-copyrights-fair-use-rules-broad-and-flexible