With all the talk about AI, one might think the problem of old-school media piracy has abated, but this week, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing entitled Digital Copyright Piracy:  Protecting American Consumers, Workers, and Creators. Although much of the conversation was familiar territory (i.e., the economic value of the creative industries and the cost of piracy), the legislative ...

After the Supreme Court’s decision in AWF v. Goldsmith restored what many of us view as common sense to the fair use doctrine of transformativeness, the flurry of litigation against AI developers will test the same principle in a different light. As discussed on this blog and elsewhere, caselaw has produced two frameworks for considering whether the “purpose and character” of ...

As reported by Insider last week, the Andreessen Horowitz VC firm a16z, complains that potential copyright liability for AI developers could harm the interest of their investors. “Imposing the cost of actual or potential copyright liability on the creators of AI models will either kill or significantly hamper their development,” they state, as quoted by Kali Hays. Sympathy for the ...

On October 30, Judge Orrick of the Northern District of California largely granted the AI companies’ motions to dismiss the class-action complaints filed by Sarah Andersen, Karla Ortiz, and Kelly McKernan on behalf of all visual artists whose works have been used without permission for the purpose of “training” generative AI models. Several complaints were dismissed with leave to amend, ...

Below are the responses I submitted to selected questions in the U.S. Copyright Office Notice of Inquiry and request for comments on artificial intelligence. 8.1. In light of the Supreme Court’s recent decisions in Google v. Oracle America and Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith, how should the “purpose and character” of the use of copyrighted works to train an AI ...

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