Books are Not Floor Wax and Road Salt — “Although the Connecticut bill does not require publishers to license to libraries in the state, it contains several provisions defining various publishers’ licensing models as ‘unfair trade practice,’ which is tantamount to a state compulsory license, which means H.B. 6829 is preempted by the Copyright Act. So, it has something to do with copyright law.”
The Training Wheels are Off: The Copyright Implications of Training Generative AI — “AI’s myriad of applications all depend on the strength and quality of the algorithm, which relies on training data. Several recent, high-profile lawsuits raise the issue of whether such training algorithms violate copyright law’s restrictions on creating derivative works without the creators’ consent.”
Some Thoughts on Five Pending AI Litigations — Avoiding Squirrels and Other AI Distractions — A deeper dive into current lawsuits involving AI and copyright and how each may shed light on a different aspect of copyright law.
You Are Not a Parrot. And a chatbot is not a human. And a linguist named Emily M. Bender is very worried what will happen when we forget this. — Generative AI models raise challenging questions regarding copyright law. But along with grasping those issues, it’s helpful—maybe necessary—to contemplate deeper questions involved. New York features writer Elizabeth Weil does just that in this piece profiling computational linguist Bender.
Leader of Illegal Copyright Infringement Scheme Sentenced to 5 ½ Years’ Imprisonment — From the DOJ: “As the Indictment set forth, from about March 2016 until at least November 2019, Carrasquillo along with his co-defendants operated a large-scale internet protocol television (IPTV) piracy scheme in which they fraudulently obtained cable television accounts and then resold copyrighted content to thousands of their own subscribers, who could then stream or playback content. . . During the period of their scheme, the defendants earned more than $30 million.”