Posts Tagged: "copyrights"

Last week, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) reached a tentative three-year deal to resolve a writer’s strike following a labor dispute with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). The deal was reached on September 27, 2023, after a 148-day strike, which was the second-longest in the union’s history. According to USA Today, the WGA’s leadership board has lifted the restraining order barring writers from returning to work, and its members will vote to officially ratify the agreement between October 2 and October 9. In a storyline that at one time would have been considered science fiction, a major point of contention between writers and producers was the use of artificial intelligence in the screenwriting process.

Recently, Humans of Bombay (HOB), a storytelling platform, filed a suit seeking an injunction to prevent the unauthorized use of their copyrighted material by another organization, People of India (POI). This includes alleged infringement of content created by HOB, literary works, materials, films, and various creative expressions. HOB connects with individuals willing to share stories or experiences and creates audio-video content. This is subsequently shared on their website and Instagram account in various formats, such as interviews, written pieces, and posts. The current suit centers around the complaint that POI have launched a nearly identical Instagram account, featuring content that closely resembles what’s found on HOB’s account.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning author and a number of Tony, Grammy and Peabody award winners are the latest to sue OpenAI for copyright infringement based on the way it trains its popular chatbot, ChatGPT. In July, comedian Sarah Silverman and authors Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey brought a similar suit against OpenAI.

Earlier this week, the Review Board of the U.S. Copyright Office published a decision denying registration of a work created using the generative artificial intelligence (GAI) system, Midjourney, highlighting the complexities such technology is introducing to the U.S. copyright system…. The decision issued this week found that Jason M. Allen’s two-dimensional artwork, titled “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial,” contained “more than a de minimis amount” of AI-created content and that the AI content must therefore be disclaimed.

The contentious issues surrounding Right to Repair are getting super-heated as the U.S. Copyright Office concludes its triennial rulemaking review of exemptions to section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Exemptions granted would be in force for three years beginning October 2024.  When is an exemption not an exemption? When it’s an exemption from common sense.

On August 30, the U.S. Copyright Office issued a notice of inquiry in the Federal Register seeking public comment on a range of issues related to the intersection of copyright law and artificial intelligence (AI). The recent notice is the latest action by the Office on the myriad of copyright issues that have been arising around the use of generative AI platforms including infringement liability for training AI systems on copyrighted content and human authorship requirements.

Last week, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois dismissed a copyright infringement lawsuit filed against the rapper and singer, Future. A Virigina-based rapper, Gutta, accused the rap star of copying his song “When U Think About It” when Future released “When I Think About It” on a 2018 mixtape. The district court judge ruled that none of the elements brought forward by Gutta were protectable under U.S. copyright law. The Virginia rapper argued that the two songs shared both subject matter and similar phrases.

The Film Independent and the International Documentary Association (IDA) sent a letter to the  Senate Subcommittee on Intellectual Property Tuesday, asking the Subcommittee to ensure that any federal right of publicity it may be considering as an answer to problems raised by generative AI artificial intelligence (AI) include an express exemption for creative works. The letter, penned by the law firm Donaldson Callif Perez, came in response to the Subcommittee hearing held on July 12, 2023, during which witnesses floated the idea of creating a federal right of publicity or an anti-impersonation right as a solution to concerns that generative AI could mimic artistic styles.

The recently-concluded term of the U.S. Supreme Court featured four intellectual property decisions: one patent case, two trademark cases, and one copyright case. Three of the four opinions were unanimous, citing fundamental and time-honored precedents for support. The only dissent involved a copyright dispute centering on Andy Warhol’s use of a third-party photograph of Prince in his work. That case resulted in a highly charged debate between Justices Sotomayor and Kagan as to whether Warhol’s copying constituted transformative fair use.

Reports of the death of the movies at the hands of IP have been greatly exaggerated. Movie ticket sales are down and may never recover from pre-pandemic highs. The actors and writers strike will not help but the scarcity of new product might. The studios are racing to screen franchise movies that put people back into theater seats. IP rights associated with franchises – Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Avengers, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Mission Impossible – are being blamed for turning the movies into a veritable video game more focused on effects than people.

The House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet met today to hear from a number of witnesses about the intersection of intellectual property rights and consumers’ right to repair products they own. The concerns voiced by witnesses and congress members today centered around harm and cost to consumers as a result of technological protection measures (TPMs) and increased use of IP tools such as design patents to thwart competition for after-market parts.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit yesterday upheld a district court ruling that embedding images from Instagram posts in third-party websites does not constitute copyright infringement. The case has to do with two photographers’ images that were embedded and posted with articles run by Buzzfeed News and Time from the photographers’ public Instagram accounts. The district court and the Ninth Circuit both cited Perfect 10 v. Amazon as precluding relief.

On July 12, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Intellectual Property held its second hearing in two months on the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) developments and intellectual property rights. This most recent hearing focused on potential violations of copyright law by generative AI platforms, the impact of those platforms on human creators, and ways in which AI companies can implement technological solutions to protect copyright owners and consumers alike.

Last week, comedian Sarah Silverman and authors Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey sued OpenAI in a U.S. district court, alleging the company’s generative AI product, ChatGPT, infringes on their copyrighted content. In addition to copyright infringement, the trio also claimed that the AI company violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), unfair competition laws and unjustly enriched the company. The lawsuit accuses OpenAI of “copying massive amounts of text” used to train ChatGPT to produce new text from prompts. Language models like OpenAI rely on datasets of text or other media to train its generative capabilities.

“The true crime in ecommerce fraud is that creators will stop creating.” That grim assessment has driven Jennifer L. Cook of SnakeArts to fight like heck against rampant infringements and counterfeits globally. Her ongoing class action lawsuit against Meta Platforms claims their subsidiary Facebook knowingly permits copyright infringement via advertisements featuring stolen product images from artists. It seems to be in Meta’s best interest to do so: FB generates the bulk of its billions of dollars in annual revenue from advertisements, without regard to the legitimacy of content.