Anthropic did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment on how guardrails currently work to prevent the alleged jailbreaks, but publishers appear satisfied by current guardrails in accepting the deal.
Whether AI training on lyrics is infringing remains unsettled
Now, the matter of whether Anthropic has strong enough guardrails to block allegedly harmful outputs is settled, Lee wrote, allowing the court to focus on arguments regarding “publishers’ request in their Motion for Preliminary Injunction that Anthropic refrain from using unauthorized copies of Publishers’ lyrics to train future AI models.”
“Whether generative AI companies can permissibly use copyrighted content to train LLMs without licenses,” Anthropic’s court filing said, “is currently being litigated in roughly two dozen copyright infringement cases around the country, none of which has sought to resolve the issue in the truncated posture of a preliminary injunction motion. It speaks volumes that no other plaintiff—including the parent company record label of one of the Plaintiffs in this case—has sought preliminary injunctive relief from this conduct.”
In a statement, Anthropic’s spokesperson told Ars that “Claude isn’t designed to be used for copyright infringement, and we have numerous processes in place designed to prevent such infringement.”
“Our decision to enter into this stipulation is consistent with those priorities,” Anthropic said. “We continue to look forward to showing that, consistent with existing copyright law, using potentially copyrighted material in the training of generative AI models is a quintessential fair use.”
This suit will likely take months to fully resolve, as the question of whether AI training is a fair use of copyrighted works is complex and remains hotly disputed in court. For Anthropic, the stakes could be high, with a loss potentially triggering more than $75 million in fines, as well as an order possibly forcing Anthropic to reveal and destroy all the copyrighted works in its training data.
“The public interest in the preservation of intellectual property rights weighs heavily against the injunction sought here, which would force Apple to distribute an app over the repeated and consistent objections of non-parties who allege their rights are infringed by the app,” Apple argued.
Unlike other free apps that continually play ads, Musi only serves ads when the app is initially opened, then allows uninterrupted listening. One Musi user also noted that Musi allows for an unlimited number of videos in a playlist, where YouTube caps playlists at 5,000 videos.
“Musi is the only playback system I have to play all 9k of my videos/songs in the same library,” the Musi fan said. “I honestly don’t just use Musi just cause it’s free. It has features no other app has, especially if you like to watch music videos while you listen to music.”
“Spotify isn’t cutting it,” one Reddit user whined.
“I hate Spotify,” another user agreed.
“I think of Musi every other day,” a third user who apparently lost the app after purchasing a new phone said. “Since I got my new iPhone, I have to settle for other music apps just to get by (not enough, of course) to listen to music in my car driving. I will be patiently waiting once Musi is available to redownload.”
Some Musi fans who still have access gloat in the threads, while others warn the litigation could soon doom the app for everyone.
Musi continues to perhaps optimistically tell users that the app is coming back, reassuring anyone whose app was accidentally offloaded that their libraries remain linked through iCloud and will be restored if it does.
Some users buy into Musi’s promises, while others seem skeptical that Musi can take on Apple. To many users still clinging to their Musi app, updating their phones has become too risky until the litigation resolves.
“Please,” one Musi fan begged. “Musi come back!!!”
“That movie sucks,” Elon Musk said in response to the lawsuit.
Credit: via Alcon Entertainment
Elon Musk may have personally used AI to rip off a Blade Runner 2049 image for a Tesla cybercab event after producers rejected any association between their iconic sci-fi movie and Musk or any of his companies.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, lawyers for Alcon Entertainment—exclusive rightsholder of the 2017 Blade Runner 2049 movie—accused Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) of conspiring with Musk and Tesla to steal the image and infringe Alcon’s copyright to benefit financially off the brand association.
According to the complaint, WBD did not approach Alcon for permission until six hours before the Tesla event when Alcon “refused all permissions and adamantly objected” to linking their movie with Musk’s cybercab.
At that point, WBD “disingenuously” downplayed the license being sought, the lawsuit said, claiming they were seeking “clip licensing” that the studio should have known would not provide rights to livestream the Tesla event globally on X (formerly Twitter).
Musk’s behavior cited
Alcon said it would never allow Tesla to exploit its Blade Runner film, so “although the information given was sparse, Alcon learned enough information for Alcon’s co-CEOs to consider the proposal and firmly reject it, which they did.” Specifically, Alcon denied any affiliation—express or implied—between Tesla’s cybercab and Blade Runner 2049.
“Musk has become an increasingly vocal, overtly political, highly polarizing figure globally, and especially in Hollywood,” Alcon’s complaint said. If Hollywood perceived an affiliation with Musk and Tesla, the complaint said, the company risked alienating not just other car brands currently weighing partnerships on the Blade Runner 2099 TV series Alcon has in the works, but also potentially losing access to top Hollywood talent for their films.
The “Hollywood talent pool market generally is less likely to deal with Alcon, or parts of the market may be, if they believe or are confused as to whether, Alcon has an affiliation with Tesla or Musk,” the complaint said.
Musk, the lawsuit said, is “problematic,” and “any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account.”
In bad faith
Because Alcon had no chance to avoid the affiliation while millions viewed the cybercab livestream on X, Alcon saw Tesla using the images over Alcon’s objections as “clearly” a “bad faith and malicious gambit… to link Tesla’s cybercab to strong Hollywood brands at a time when Tesla and Musk are on the outs with Hollywood,” the complaint said.
Alcon believes that WBD’s agreement was likely worth six or seven figures and likely stipulated that Tesla “affiliate the cybercab with one or more motion pictures from” WBD’s catalog.
While any of the Mad Max movies may have fit the bill, Musk wanted to use Blade Runner 2049, the lawsuit alleged, because that movie features an “artificially intelligent autonomously capable” flying car (known as a spinner) and is “extremely relevant” to “precisely the areas of artificial intelligence, self-driving capability, and autonomous automotive capability that Tesla and Musk are trying to market” with the cybercab.
The Blade Runner 2049 spinner is “one of the most famous vehicles in motion picture history,” the complaint alleged, recently exhibited alongside other iconic sci-fi cars like the Back to the Future time-traveling DeLorean or the light cycle from Tron: Legacy.
As Alcon sees it, Musk seized the misappropriation of the Blade Runner image to help him sell Teslas, and WBD allegedly directed Musk to use AI to skirt Alcon’s copyright to avoid a costly potential breach of contract on the day of the event.
For Alcon, brand partnerships are a lucrative business, with carmakers paying as much as $10 million to associate their vehicles with Blade Runner 2049. By seemingly using AI to generate a stylized copy of the image at the heart of the movie—which references the scene where their movie’s hero, K, meets the original 1982 Blade Runner hero, Rick Deckard—Tesla avoided paying Alcon’s typical fee, their complaint said.
Musk maybe faked the image himself, lawsuit says
During the live event, Musk introduced the cybercab on a WBD Hollywood studio lot. For about 11 seconds, the Tesla founder “awkwardly” displayed a fake, allegedly AI-generated Blade Runner 2049 film still. He used the image to make a point that apocalyptic films show a future that’s “dark and dismal,” whereas Tesla’s vision of the future is much brighter.
In Musk’s slideshow image, believed to be AI-generated, a male figure is “seen from behind, with close-cropped hair, wearing a trench coat or duster, standing in almost full silhouette as he surveys the abandoned ruins of a city, all bathed in misty orange light,” the lawsuit said. The similarity to the key image used in Blade Runner 2049 marketing is not “coincidental,” the complaint said.
If there were any doubts that this image was supposed to reference the Blade Runner movie, the lawsuit said, Musk “erased them” by directly referencing the movie in his comments.
“You know, I love Blade Runner, but I don’t know if we want that future,” Musk said at the event. “I believe we want that duster he’s wearing, but not the, uh, not the bleak apocalypse.”
The producers think the image was likely generated—”even possibly by Musk himself”—by “asking an AI image generation engine to make ‘an image from the K surveying ruined Las Vegas sequence of Blade Runner2049,’ or some closely equivalent input direction,” the lawsuit said.
Alcon is not sure exactly what went down after the company rejected rights to use the film’s imagery at the event and is hoping to learn more through the litigation’s discovery phase.
Musk may try to argue that his comments at the Tesla event were “only meant to talk broadly about the general idea of science fiction films and undesirable apocalyptic futures and juxtaposing them with Musk’s ostensibly happier robot car future vision.”
But producers argued that defense is “not credible” since Tesla explicitly asked to use the Blade Runner 2049 image, and there are “better” films in WBD’s library to promote Musk’s message, like the Mad Max movies.
“But those movies don’t have massive consumer goodwill specifically around really cool-looking (Academy Award-winning) artificially intelligent, autonomous cars,” the complaint said, accusing Musk of stealing the image when it wasn’t given to him.
If Tesla and WBD are found to have violated copyright and false representation laws, that potentially puts both companies on the hook for damages that cover not just copyright fines but also Alcon’s lost profits and reputation damage after the alleged “massive economic theft.”
Musk responds to Blade Runner suit
Alcon suspects that Musk believed that Blade Runner 2049 was eligible to be used at the event under the WBD agreement, not knowing that WBD never had “any non-domestic rights or permissions for the Picture.”
Once Musk requested to use the Blade Runner imagery, Alcon alleged that WBD scrambled to secure rights by obscuring the very lucrative “larger brand affiliation proposal” by positioning their ask as a request for much less expensive “clip licensing.”
After Alcon rejected the proposal outright, WBD told Tesla that the affiliation in the event could not occur because X planned to livestream the event globally. But even though Tesla and X allegedly knew that the affiliation was rejected, Musk appears to have charged ahead with the event as planned.
“It all exuded an odor of thinly contrived excuse to link Tesla’s cybercab to strong Hollywood brands,” Alcon’s complaint said. “Which of course is exactly what it was.”
Alcon is hoping a jury will find Tesla, Musk, and WBD violated laws. Producers have asked for an injunction stopping Tesla from using any Blade Runner imagery in its promotional or advertising campaigns. They also want a disclaimer slapped on the livestreamed event video on X, noting that the Blade Runner association is “false or misleading.”
For Musk, a ban on linking Blade Runner to his car company may feel bleak. Last year, he touted the Cybertruck as an “armored personnel carrier from the future—what Bladerunner would have driven.” This amused many Blade Runner fans, as Gizmodo noted, because there never was a character named “Bladerunner,” but rather that was just a job title for the film’s hero Deckard.
In response to the lawsuit, Musk took to X to post what Blade Runner fans—who rated the 2017 movie as 88 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes—might consider a polarizing take, replying, “That movie sucks” on a post calling out Alcon’s lawsuit as “absurd.”
Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.
Judges for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday rejected the Internet Archive (IA) argument that its controlled digital lending—which allows only one person to borrow each scanned e-book at a time—was a transformative fair use that worked like a traditional library and did not violate copyright law.
As Judge Beth Robinson wrote in the decision, because the IA’s digital copies of books did not “provide criticism, commentary, or information about the originals” or alter the original books to add “something new,” the court concluded that the IA’s use of publishers’ books was not transformative, hobbling the organization’s fair use defense.
“IA’s digital books serve the same exact purpose as the originals: making authors’ works available to read,” Robinson said, emphasizing that although in copyright law, “[n]ot every instance will be clear cut,” “this one is.”
The appeals court ruling affirmed the lower court’s ruling, which permanently barred the IA from distributing not just the works in the suit, but all books “available for electronic licensing,” Robinson said.
“To construe IA’s use of the Works as transformative would significantly narrow―if not entirely eviscerate―copyright owners’ exclusive right to prepare (or not prepare) derivative works,” Robinson wrote.
Maria Pallante, president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers, the trade organization behind the lawsuit, celebrated the ruling. She said the court upheld “the rights of authors and publishers to license and be compensated for their books and other creative works and reminds us in no uncertain terms that infringement is both costly and antithetical to the public interest.”
“If there was any doubt, the Court makes clear that under fair use jurisprudence there is nothing transformative about converting entire works into new formats without permission or appropriating the value of derivative works that are a key part of the author’s copyright bundle,” Pallante said.
The Internet Archive’s director of library services, Chris Freeland, issued a statement on the loss, which comes after four years of fighting to maintain its Open Libraries Project.
“We are disappointed in today’s opinion about the Internet Archive’s digital lending of books that are available electronically elsewhere,” Freeland said. “We are reviewing the court’s opinion and will continue to defend the rights of libraries to own, lend, and preserve books.”
IA’s lending harmed publishers, judge says
The court’s fair use analysis didn’t solely hinge on whether IA’s digital lending of e-books was “transformative.” Judges also had to consider book publishers’ claims that IA was profiting off e-book lending, in addition to factoring in whether each work was original, what amount of each work was being copied, and whether the IA’s e-books substituted original works, depriving authors of revenue in relevant markets.
Ultimately, for each factor, judges ruled in favor of publishers, which argued that granting IA was threatening to “‘destroy the value of [their] exclusive right to prepare derivative works,’ including the right to publish their authors’ works as e-books.”
While the IA tried to argue that book publishers’ surging profits suggested that its digital lending caused no market harms, Robinson disagreed with the IA’s experts’ “ill-supported” market analysis and took issue with IA advertising “its digital books as a free alternative to Publishers’ print and e-books.”
“IA offers effectively the same product as Publishers―full copies of the Works―but at no cost to consumers or libraries,” Robinson wrote. “At least in this context, it is difficult to compete with free.”
Robinson wrote that despite book publishers showing no proof of market harms, that lack of evidence did not support IA’s case, ruling that IA did not satisfy its burden to prove it had not harmed publishers. She further wrote that it’s common sense to agree with publishers’ characterization of harms because “IA’s digital books compete directly with Publishers’ e-books” and would deprive authors of revenue if left unchecked.
“We agree with Publishers’ assessment of market harm” and “are likewise convinced” that “unrestricted and widespread conduct of the sort engaged in by [IA] would result in a substantially adverse impact on the potential market” for publishers’ e-books, Robinson wrote. “Though Publishers have not provided empirical data to support this observation, we routinely rely on such logical inferences where appropriate” when determining fair use.
Judges did, however, side with IA on the matter of whether the nonprofit was profiting off loaning e-books for free, contradicting the lower court. The appeals court disagreed with book publishers’ claims that IA profited off e-books by soliciting donations or earning a small percentage from used books sold through referral links on its site.
“Of course, IA must solicit some funds to keep the lights on,” Robinson wrote. But “IA does not profit directly from its Free Digital Library,” and it would be “misleading” to characterize it that way.
“To hold otherwise would greatly restrain the ability of nonprofits to seek donations while making fair use of copyrighted works,” Robinson wrote.
Artists defending a class-action lawsuit are claiming a major win this week in their fight to stop the most sophisticated AI image generators from copying billions of artworks to train AI models and replicate their styles without compensating artists.
In an order on Monday, US district judge William Orrick denied key parts of motions to dismiss from Stability AI, Midjourney, Runway AI, and DeviantArt. The court will now allow artists to proceed with discovery on claims that AI image generators relying on Stable Diffusion violate both the Copyright Act and the Lanham Act, which protects artists from commercial misuse of their names and unique styles.
“We won BIG,” an artist plaintiff, Karla Ortiz, wrote on X (formerly Twitter), celebrating the order. “Not only do we proceed on our copyright claims,” but “this order also means companies who utilize” Stable Diffusion models and LAION-like datasets that scrape artists’ works for AI training without permission “could now be liable for copyright infringement violations, amongst other violations.”
Lawyers for the artists, Joseph Saveri and Matthew Butterick, told Ars that artists suing “consider the Court’s order a significant step forward for the case,” as “the Court allowed Plaintiffs’ core copyright-infringement claims against all four defendants to proceed.”
Stability AI was the only company that responded to Ars’ request to comment, but it declined to comment.
Artists prepare to defend their livelihoods from AI
To get to this stage of the suit, artists had to amend their complaint to better explain exactly how AI image generators work to allegedly train on artists’ images and copy artists’ styles.
For example, they were told that if they “contend Stable Diffusion contains ‘compressed copies’ of the Training Images, they need to define ‘compressed copies’ and explain plausible facts in support. And if plaintiffs’ compressed copies theory is based on a contention that Stable Diffusion contains mathematical or statistical methods that can be carried out through algorithms or instructions in order to reconstruct the Training Images in whole or in part to create the new Output Images, they need to clarify that and provide plausible facts in support,” Orrick wrote.
To keep their fight alive, the artists pored through academic articles to support their arguments that “Stable Diffusion is built to a significant extent on copyrighted works and that the way the product operates necessarily invokes copies or protected elements of those works.” Orrick agreed that their amended complaint made plausible inferences that “at this juncture” is enough to support claims “that Stable Diffusion by operation by end users creates copyright infringement and was created to facilitate that infringement by design.”
“Specifically, the Court found Plaintiffs’ theory that image-diffusion models like Stable Diffusion contain compressed copies of their datasets to be plausible,” Saveri and Butterick’s statement to Ars said. “The Court also found it plausible that training, distributing, and copying such models constitute acts of copyright infringement.”
Not all of the artists’ claims survived, with Orrick granting motions to dismiss claims alleging that AI companies removed content management information from artworks in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Because artists failed to show evidence of defendants altering or stripping this information, they must permanently drop the DMCA claims.
Part of Orrick’s decision on the DMCA claims, however, indicates that the legal basis for dismissal is “unsettled,” with Orrick simply agreeing with Stability AI’s unsettled argument that “because the output images are admittedly not identical to the Training Images, there can be no liability for any removal of CMI that occurred during the training process.”
Ortiz wrote on X that she respectfully disagreed with that part of the decision but expressed enthusiasm that the court allowed artists to proceed with false endorsement claims, alleging that Midjourney violated the Lanham Act.
Five artists successfully argued that because “their names appeared on the list of 4,700 artists posted by Midjourney’s CEO on Discord” and that list was used to promote “the various styles of artistic works its AI product could produce,” this plausibly created confusion over whether those artists had endorsed Midjourney.
“Whether or not a reasonably prudent consumer would be confused or misled by the Names List and showcase to conclude that the included artists were endorsing the Midjourney product can be tested at summary judgment,” Orrick wrote. “Discovery may show that it is or that is it not.”
While Orrick agreed with Midjourney that “plaintiffs have no protection over ‘simple, cartoony drawings’ or ‘gritty fantasy paintings,'” artists were able to advance a “trade dress” claim under the Lanham Act, too. This is because Midjourney allegedly “allows users to create works capturing the ‘trade dress of each of the Midjourney Named Plaintiffs [that] is inherently distinctive in look and feel as used in connection with their artwork and art products.'”
As discovery proceeds in the case, artists will also have an opportunity to amend dismissed claims of unjust enrichment. According to Orrick, their next amended complaint will be their last chance to prove that AI companies have “deprived plaintiffs ‘the benefit of the value of their works.'”
Saveri and Butterick confirmed that “though the Court dismissed certain supplementary claims, Plaintiffs’ central claims will now proceed to discovery and trial.” On X, Ortiz suggested that the artists’ case is “now potentially one of THE biggest copyright infringement and trade dress cases ever!”
“Looking forward to the next stage of our fight!” Ortiz wrote.
Enlarge / Disney+ promotional art for The Fable, an anime series that triggered Animeflix takedown notices.
Disney+
Thousands of anime fans were shocked Thursday when the popular piracy site Animeflix voluntarily shut down without explaining why, TorrentFreak reported.
“It is with a heavy heart that we announce the closure of Animeflix,” the site’s operators told users in a Discord with 35,000 members. “After careful consideration, we have decided to shut down our service effective immediately. We deeply appreciate your support and enthusiasm over the years.”
Prior to its shutdown, Animeflix attracted millions of monthly visits, TorrentFreak reported. It was preferred by some anime fans for its clean interface, with one fan on Reddit describing Animeflix as the “Netflix of anime.”
“Deadass this site was clean,” one Reddit user wrote. “The best I’ve ever seen. Sad to see it go.”
Although Animeflix operators did not connect the dots for users, TorrentFreak suggested that the piracy site chose to shut down after facing “considerable legal pressure in recent months.”
Back in December, an anti-piracy group, Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), sought to shut down Animeflix. Then in mid-May, rightsholders—including Netflix, Disney, Universal, Paramount, and Warner Bros.—won an injunction through the High Court of India against several piracy sites, including Animeflix. This briefly caused Animeflix to be unavailable until Animeflix simply switched to another domain and continued serving users, TorrentFreak reported.
Although Animeflix is not telling users why it’s choosing to shut down now, TorrentFreak—which, as its name suggests, focuses much of its coverage on copyright issues impacting file sharing online—noted that “when a pirate site shuts down, voluntarily or not, copyright issues typically play a role.”
For anime fans, the abrupt closure was disappointing because of difficulty accessing the hottest new anime titles and delays as studios work to offer translations to various regions. The delays are so bad that some studios are considering combating piracy by using AI to push out translated versions more quickly. But fans fear this will only result in low-quality subtitles, CBR reported.
On Reddit, some fans also complained after relying exclusively on Animeflix to keep track of where they left off on anime shows that often span hundreds of episodes.
Others begged to be turned onto other anime piracy sites, while some speculated whether Animeflix might eventually pop up at a new domain. TorrentFreak noted that Animeflix shut down once previously several years ago but ultimately came back. One Redditor wrote, “another hero has passed away but the will, will be passed.” On another Reddit thread asking “will Animeflix be gone forever or maybe create a new site,” one commenter commiserated, writing, “We don’t know for sure. Only time will tell.”
It’s also possible that someone else may pick up the torch and operate a new piracy site under the same name. According to TorrentFreak, this is “likely.”
Animeflix did not reassure users that it may be back, instead urging them to find other sources for their favorite shows and movies.
“We hope the joy and excitement of anime continue to brighten your days through other wonderful platforms,” Animeflix’s Discord message said.
ACE did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment.
In the weeks ahead of IA’s efforts to appeal that ruling, IA was forced to remove 500,000 books from its collection, shocking users. In an open letter to publishers, more than 30,000 readers, researchers, and authors begged for access to the books to be restored in the open library, claiming the takedowns dealt “a serious blow to lower-income families, people with disabilities, rural communities, and LGBTQ+ people, among many others,” who may not have access to a local library or feel “safe accessing the information they need in public.”
During a press briefing following arguments in court Friday, IA founder Brewster Kahle said that “those voices weren’t being heard.” Judges appeared primarily focused on understanding how IA’s digital lending potentially hurts publishers’ profits in the ebook licensing market, rather than on how publishers’ costly ebook licensing potentially harms readers.
However, lawyers representing IA—Joseph C. Gratz, from the law firm Morrison Foerster, and Corynne McSherry, from the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation—confirmed that judges were highly engaged by IA’s defense. Arguments that were initially scheduled to last only 20 minutes stretched on instead for an hour and a half. Ultimately, judges decided not to rule from the bench, with a decision expected in the coming months or potentially next year. McSherry said the judges’ engagement showed that the judges “get it” and won’t make the decision without careful consideration of both sides.
“They understand this is an important decision,” McSherry said. “They understand that there are real consequences here for real people. And they are taking their job very, very seriously. And I think that’s the best that we can hope for, really.”
On the other side, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the trade organization behind the lawsuit, provided little insight into how the day went. When reached for comment, AAP simply said, “We thought it was a strong day in court, and we look forward to the opinion.”
Decision could come early fall
According to Gratz, most of the questions for IA focused on “how to think about the situation where a particular book is available” from the open library and also available as an ebook that a library can license. Judges said they did not know how to think about “a situation where the publishers just haven’t come forward with any data showing that this has an impact,” Gratz said.
One audience member at the press briefing noted that instead judges were floating hypotheticals, like “if every single person in the world made a copy of a hypothetical thing, could hypothetically this affect the publishers’ revenue.”
McSherry said this was a common tactic when judges must weigh the facts while knowing that their decision will set an important precedent. However, IA has shown evidence, Gratz said, that even if IA provided limitless loans of digitized physical copies, “CDL doesn’t cause any economic harm to publishers, or authors,” and “there was absolutely no evidence of any harm of that kind that the publishers were able to bring forward.”
McSherry said that IA pushed back on claims that IA behaves like “pirates” when digitally lending books, with critics sometimes comparing the open library to illegal file-sharing networks. Instead, McSherry said that CDL provides a path to “meet readers where they are,” allowing IA to loan books that it owns to one user at a time no matter where in the world they are located.
“It’s not unlawful for a library to lend a book it owns to one patron at a time,” Gratz said IA told the court. “And the advent of digital technology doesn’t change that result. That’s lawful. And that’s what librarians do.”
In the open letter, IA fans pointed out that many IA readers were “in underserved communities where access is limited” to quality library resources. Being suddenly cut off from accessing nearly half a million books has “far-reaching implications,” they argued, removing access to otherwise inaccessible “research materials and literature that support their learning and academic growth.”
IA has argued that because copyright law is intended to provide equal access to knowledge, copyright law is better served by allowing IA’s lending than by preventing it. They’re hoping the judges will decide that CDL is fair use, reversing the lower court’s decision and restoring access to books recently removed from the open library. But Gratz said there’s no telling yet when that decision will come.
“There is no deadline for them to make a decision,” Gratz said, but it “probably won’t happen until early fall” at the earliest. After that, whichever side loses will have an opportunity to appeal the case, which has already stretched on for four years, to the Supreme Court. Since neither side seems prepared to back down, the Supreme Court eventually weighing in seems inevitable.
McSherry seemed optimistic that the judges at least understood the stakes for IA readers, noting that fair use is “designed to ensure that copyright actually serves the public interest,” not publishers’. Should the court decide otherwise, McSherry warned, the court risks allowing “a few powerful publishers” to “hijack the future of books.”
When IA first appealed, Kahle put out a statement saying IA couldn’t walk away from “a fight to keep library books available for those seeking truth in the digital age.”
IA reported in a blog post this month that publishers abruptly forcing these takedowns triggered a “devastating loss” for readers who depend on IA to access books that are otherwise impossible or difficult to access.
To restore access, IA is now appealing, hoping to reverse the prior court’s decision by convincing the US Court of Appeals in the Second Circuit that IA’s controlled digital lending of its physical books should be considered fair use under copyright law. An April court filing shows that IA intends to argue that the publishers have no evidence that the e-book market has been harmed by the open library’s lending, and copyright law is better served by allowing IA’s lending than by preventing it.
“We use industry-standard technology to prevent our books from being downloaded and redistributed—the same technology used by corporate publishers,” Chris Freeland, IA’s director of library services, wrote in the blog. “But the publishers suing our library say we shouldn’t be allowed to lend the books we own. They have forced us to remove more than half a million books from our library, and that’s why we are appealing.”
IA will have an opportunity to defend its practices when oral arguments start in its appeal on June 28.
“Our position is straightforward; we just want to let our library patrons borrow and read the books we own, like any other library,” Freeland wrote, while arguing that the “potential repercussions of this lawsuit extend far beyond the Internet Archive” and publishers should just “let readers read.”
“This is a fight for the preservation of all libraries and the fundamental right to access information, a cornerstone of any democratic society,” Freeland wrote. “We believe in the right of authors to benefit from their work; and we believe that libraries must be permitted to fulfill their mission of providing access to knowledge, regardless of whether it takes physical or digital form. Doing so upholds the principle that knowledge should be equally and equitably accessible to everyone, regardless of where they live or where they learn.”
Internet Archive fans beg publishers to end takedowns
After publishers won an injunction stopping IA’s digital lending, which “limits what we can do with our digitized books,” IA’s help page said, the open library started shrinking. While “removed books are still available to patrons with print disabilities,” everyone else has been cut off, causing many books in IA’s collection to show up as “Borrow Unavailable.”
Ever since, IA has been “inundated” with inquiries from readers all over the world searching for the removed books, Freeland said. And “we get tagged in social media every day where people are like, ‘why are there so many books gone from our library’?” Freeland told Ars.
In an open letter to publishers signed by nearly 19,000 supporters, IA fans begged publishers to reconsider forcing takedowns and quickly restore access to the lost books.
Among the “far-reaching implications” of the takedowns, IA fans counted the negative educational impact of academics, students, and educators—”particularly in underserved communities where access is limited—who were suddenly cut off from “research materials and literature that support their learning and academic growth.”
They also argued that the takedowns dealt “a serious blow to lower-income families, people with disabilities, rural communities, and LGBTQ+ people, among many others,” who may not have access to a local library or feel “safe accessing the information they need in public.”
“Your removal of these books impedes academic progress and innovation, as well as imperiling the preservation of our cultural and historical knowledge,” the letter said.
“This isn’t happening in the abstract,” Freeland told Ars. “This is real. People no longer have access to a half a million books.”
YouTube’s Content ID system—which automatically detects content registered by rightsholders—is “completely fucking broken,” a YouTuber called “Albino” declared in a rant on X (formerly Twitter) viewed more than 950,000 times.
Albino, who is also a popular Twitch streamer, complained that his YouTube video playing through Fallout was demonetized because a Samsung washing machine randomly chimed to signal a laundry cycle had finished while he was streaming.
Apparently, YouTube had automatically scanned Albino’s video and detected the washing machine chime as a song called “Done”—which Albino quickly saw was uploaded to YouTube by a musician known as Audego nine years ago.
But when Albino hit play on Audego’s song, the only thing that he heard was a 30-second clip of the washing machine chime. To Albino it was obvious that Audego didn’t have any rights to the jingle, which Dexerto reported actually comes from the song “Die Forelle” (“The Trout”) from Austrian composer Franz Schubert.
The song was composed in 1817 and is in the public domain. Samsung has used it to signal the end of a wash cycle for years, sparking debate over whether it’s the catchiest washing machine song and inspiring at least one violinist to perform a duet with her machine. It’s been a source of delight for many Samsung customers, but for Albino, hearing the jingle appropriated on YouTube only inspired ire.
“A guy recorded his fucking washing machine and uploaded it to YouTube with Content ID,” Albino said in a video on X. “And now I’m getting copyright claims” while “my money” is “going into the toilet and being given to this fucking slime.”
Albino suggested that YouTube had potentially allowed Audego to make invalid copyright claims for years without detecting the seemingly obvious abuse.
“How is this still here?” Albino asked. “It took me one Google search to figure this out,” and “now I’m sharing revenue with this? That’s insane.”
At first, Team YouTube gave Albino a boilerplate response on X, writing, “We understand how important it is for you. From your vid, it looks like you’ve recently submitted a dispute. When you dispute a Content ID claim, the person who claimed your video (the claimant) is notified and they have 30 days to respond.”
Albino expressed deep frustration at YouTube’s response, given how “egregious” he considered the copyright abuse to be.
“Just wait for the person blatantly stealing copyrighted material to respond,” Albino responded to YouTube. “Ah okay, yes, I’m sure they did this in good faith and will make the correct call, though it would be a shame if they simply clicked ‘reject dispute,’ took all the ad revenue money and forced me to risk having my channel terminated to appeal it!! XDxXDdxD!! Thanks Team YouTube!”
Soon after, YouTube confirmed on X that Audego’s copyright claim was indeed invalid. The social platform ultimately released the claim and told Albino to expect the changes to be reflected on his channel within two business days.
Ars could not immediately reach YouTube or Albino for comment.
Widespread abuse of Content ID continues
YouTubers have complained about abuse of Content ID for years. Techdirt’s Timothy Geigner agreed with Albino’s assessment that the YouTube system is “hopelessly broken,” noting that sometimes content is flagged by mistake. But just as easily, bad actors can abuse the system to claim “content that simply isn’t theirs” and seize sometimes as much as millions in ad revenue.
In 2021, YouTube announced that it had invested “hundreds of millions of dollars” to create content management tools, of which Content ID quickly emerged as the platform’s go-to solution to detect and remove copyrighted materials.
At that time, YouTube claimed that Content ID was created as a “solution for those with the most complex rights management needs,” like movie studios and record labels whose movie clips and songs are most commonly uploaded by YouTube users. YouTube warned that without Content ID, “rightsholders could have their rights impaired and lawful expression could be inappropriately impacted.”
Since its rollout, more than 99 percent of copyright actions on YouTube have consistently been triggered automatically through Content ID.
And just as consistently, YouTube has seen widespread abuse of Content ID, terminating “tens of thousands of accounts each year that attempt to abuse our copyright tools,” YouTube said. YouTube also acknowledged in 2021 that “just one invalid reference file in Content ID can impact thousands of videos and users, stripping them of monetization or blocking them altogether.”
To help rightsholders and creators track how much copyrighted content is removed from the platform, YouTube started releasing biannual transparency reports in 2021. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit digital rights group, applauded YouTube’s “move towards transparency” while criticizing YouTube’s “claim that YouTube is adequately protecting its creators.”
“That rings hollow,” EFF reported in 2021, noting that “huge conglomerates have consistently pushed for more and more restrictions on the use of copyrighted material, at the expense of fair use and, as a result, free expression.” As EFF saw it then, YouTube’s Content ID system mainly served to appease record labels and movie studios, while creators felt “pressured” not to dispute Content ID claims out of “fear” that their channel might be removed if YouTube consistently sided with rights holders.
According to YouTube, “it’s impossible for matching technology to take into account complex legal considerations like fair use or fair dealing,” and that impossibility seemingly ensures that creators bear the brunt of automated actions even when it’s fair to use copyrighted materials.
At that time, YouTube described Content ID as “an entirely new revenue stream from ad-supported, user generated content” for rights holders, who made more than $5.5 billion from Content ID matches by December 2020. More recently, YouTube reported that figure climbed above $9 million, as of December 2022. With so much money at play, it’s easy to see how the system could be seen as disproportionately favoring rights holders, while creators continue to suffer from income diverted by the automated system.
A US district judge William Alsup has dismissed Elon Musk’s X Corp’s lawsuit against Bright Data, a data-scraping company accused of improperly accessing X (formerly Twitter) systems and violating both X terms and state laws when scraping and selling data.
X sued Bright Data to stop the company from scraping and selling X data to academic institutes and businesses, including Fortune 500 companies.
According to Alsup, X failed to state a claim while arguing that companies like Bright Data should have to pay X to access public data posted by X users.
“To the extent the claims are based on access to systems, they fail because X Corp. has alleged no more than threadbare recitals,” parroting laws and findings in other cases without providing any supporting evidence, Alsup wrote. “To the extent the claims are based on scraping and selling of data, they fail because they are preempted by federal law,” specifically standing as an “obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of” the Copyright Act.
The judge found that X Corp’s argument exposed a tension between the platform’s desire to control user data while also enjoying the safe harbor of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which allows X to avoid liability for third-party content. If X owned the data, it could perhaps argue it has exclusive rights to control the data, but then it wouldn’t have safe harbor.
“X Corp. wants it both ways: to keep its safe harbors yet exercise a copyright owner’s right to exclude, wresting fees from those who wish to extract and copy X users’ content,” Alsup wrote.
If X got its way, Alsup warned, “X Corp. would entrench its own private copyright system that rivals, even conflicts with, the actual copyright system enacted by Congress” and “yank into its private domain and hold for sale information open to all, exercising a copyright owner’s right to exclude where it has no such right.”
That “would upend the careful balance Congress struck between what copyright owners own and do not own,” Alsup wrote, potentially shrinking the public domain.
“Applying general principles, this order concludes that the extent to which public data may be freely copied from social media platforms, even under the banner of scraping, should generally be governed by the Copyright Act, not by conflicting, ubiquitous terms,” Alsup wrote.
Bright Data CEO Or Lenchner said in a statement provided to Ars that Alsup’s decision had “profound implications in business, research, training of AI models, and beyond.”
“Bright Data has proven that ethical and transparent scraping practices for legitimate business use and social good initiatives are legally sound,” Lenchner said. “Companies that try to control user data intended for public consumption will not win this legal battle.”
Alsup pointed out that X’s lawsuit was “not looking to protect X users’ privacy” but rather to block Bright Data from interfering with its “own sale of its data through a tiered subscription service.”
“X Corp. is happy to allow the extraction and copying of X users’ content so long as it gets paid,” Alsup wrote.
In a sea of vague claims that scraping is “unfair,” perhaps most deficient in X’s complaint, Alsup suggested, was X’s failure to allege that Bright Data’s scraping impaired its services or that X suffered any damages.
“There are no allegations of servers harmed or identities misrepresented,” Alsup wrote. “Additionally, there are no allegations of any damage resulting from automated or unauthorized access.”
X will be allowed to amend its complaint and appeal. The case may be strengthened if X can show evidence of damages or prove that the scraping overburdened X or otherwise deprived X users of their use of the platform in a way that could damage X’s reputation.
But as it currently stands, X’s arguments in many ways appear rather “bare,” Alsup wrote, while its terms of service make crystal clear to users that “[w]hat’s yours is yours—you own your Content.”
By attempting to exclude Bright Data from accessing public X posts owned by X users, X also nearly “obliterated” the “fair use” provision of the Copyright Act, “flouting” Congress’ intent in passing the law, Alsup wrote.
“Only by receiving permission and paying X Corp. could Bright Data, its customers, and other X users freely reproduce, adapt, distribute, and display what might (or might not) be available for taking and selling as fair use,” Alsup wrote. “Thus, Bright Data, its customers, and other X users who wanted to make fair use of copyrighted content would not be able to do so.”
A win for X could have had dire consequences for the Internet, Alsup suggested. In dismissing the complaint, Alsup cited an appeals court ruling “that giving social media companies “free rein to decide, on any basis, who can collect and use data—data that the companies do not own, that they otherwise make publicly available to viewers, and that the companies themselves collect and use—risks the possible creation of information monopolies that would disserve the public interest.”
Because that outcome was averted, Lenchner is celebrating Bright Data’s win.
“Bright Data’s victory over X makes it clear to the world that public information on the web belongs to all of us, and any attempt to deny the public access will fail,” Lenchner said.
In 2023, Bright Data won a similar lawsuit lobbed by Meta over scraping public Facebook and Instagram data. These lawsuits, Lenchner alleged, “are used as a monetary weapon to discourage collecting public data from sites, so conglomerates can hoard user-generated public data.”
“Courts recognize this and the risks it poses of information monopolies and ownership of the Internet,” Lenchner said.
Amid a flurry of lawsuits over AI models’ training data, US Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has introduced a bill that would require AI companies to disclose exactly which copyrighted works are included in datasets training AI systems.
The Generative AI Disclosure Act “would require a notice to be submitted to the Register of Copyrights prior to the release of a new generative AI system with regard to all copyrighted works used in building or altering the training dataset for that system,” Schiff said in a press release.
The bill is retroactive and would apply to all AI systems available today, as well as to all AI systems to come. It would take effect 180 days after it’s enacted, requiring anyone who creates or alters a training set not only to list works referenced by the dataset, but also to provide a URL to the dataset within 30 days before the AI system is released to the public. That URL would presumably give creators a way to double-check if their materials have been used and seek any credit or compensation available before the AI tools are in use.
All notices would be kept in a publicly available online database.
Schiff described the act as championing “innovation while safeguarding the rights and contributions of creators, ensuring they are aware when their work contributes to AI training datasets.”
“This is about respecting creativity in the age of AI and marrying technological progress with fairness,” Schiff said.
Currently, creators who don’t have access to training datasets rely on AI models’ outputs to figure out if their copyrighted works may have been included in training various AI systems. The New York Times, for example, prompted ChatGPT to spit out excerpts of its articles, relying on a tactic to identify training data by asking ChatGPT to produce lines from specific articles, which OpenAI has curiously described as “hacking.”
Under Schiff’s law, The New York Times would need to consult the database to ID all articles used to train ChatGPT or any other AI system.
Any AI maker who violates the act would risk a “civil penalty in an amount not less than $5,000,” the proposed bill said.
At a hearing on artificial intelligence and intellectual property, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.)—who chairs the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet—told Schiff that his subcommittee would consider the “thoughtful” bill.
Schiff told the subcommittee that the bill is “only a first step” toward “ensuring that at a minimum” creators are “aware of when their work contributes to AI training datasets,” saying that he would “welcome the opportunity to work with members of the subcommittee” on advancing the bill.
“The rapid development of generative AI technologies has outpaced existing copyright laws, which has led to widespread use of creative content to train generative AI models without consent or compensation,” Schiff warned at the hearing.
In Schiff’s press release, Meredith Stiehm, president of the Writers Guild of America West, joined leaders from other creative groups celebrating the bill as an “important first step” for rightsholders.
“Greater transparency and guardrails around AI are necessary to protect writers and other creators” and address “the unprecedented and unauthorized use of copyrighted materials to train generative AI systems,” Stiehm said.
Until the thorniest AI copyright questions are settled, Ken Doroshow, a chief legal officer for the Recording Industry Association of America, suggested that Schiff’s bill filled an important gap by introducing “comprehensive and transparent recordkeeping” that would provide “one of the most fundamental building blocks of effective enforcement of creators’ rights.”
A senior adviser for the Human Artistry Campaign, Moiya McTier, went further, celebrating the bill as stopping AI companies from “exploiting” artists and creators.
“AI companies should stop hiding the ball when they copy creative works into AI systems and embrace clear rules of the road for recordkeeping that create a level and transparent playing field for the development and licensing of genuinely innovative applications and tools,” McTier said.
AI copyright guidance coming soon
While courts weigh copyright questions raised by artists, book authors, and newspapers, the US Copyright Office announced in March that it would be issuing guidance later this year, but the office does not seem to be prioritizing questions on AI training.
Instead, the Copyright Office will focus first on issuing guidance on deepfakes and AI outputs. This spring, the office will release a report “analyzing the impact of AI on copyright” of “digital replicas, or the use of AI to digitally replicate individuals’ appearances, voices, or other aspects of their identities.” Over the summer, another report will focus on “the copyrightability of works incorporating AI-generated material.”
Regarding “the topic of training AI models on copyrighted works as well as any licensing considerations and liability issues,” the Copyright Office did not provide a timeline for releasing guidance, only confirming that their “goal is to finalize the entire report by the end of the fiscal year.”
Once guidance is available, it could sway court opinions, although courts do not necessarily have to apply Copyright Office guidance when weighing cases.
The Copyright Office’s aspirational timeline does seem to be ahead of when at least some courts can be expected to decide on some of the biggest copyright questions for some creators. The class-action lawsuit raised by book authors against OpenAI, for example, is not expected to be resolved until February 2025, and the New York Times’ lawsuit is likely on a similar timeline. However, artists suing Stability AI face a hearing on that AI company’s motion to dismiss this May.
Google has agreed to pay 250 million euros (about $273 million) to settle a dispute in France after breaching years-old commitments to inform and pay French news publishers when referencing and displaying content in both search results and when training Google’s AI-powered chatbot, Gemini.
According to France’s competition watchdog, the Autorité de la Concurrence (ADLC), Google dodged many commitments to deal with publishers fairly. Most recently, it never notified publishers or the ADLC before training Gemini (initially launched as Bard) on publishers’ content or displaying content in Gemini outputs. Google also waited until September 28, 2023, to introduce easy options for publishers to opt out, which made it impossible for publishers to negotiate fair deals for that content, the ADLC found.
“Until this date, press agencies and publishers wanting to opt out of this use had to insert an instruction opposing any crawling of their content by Google, including on the Search, Discover and Google News services,” the ADLC noted, warning that “in the future, the Autorité will be particularly attentive as regards the effectiveness of opt-out systems implemented by Google.”
To address breaches of four out of seven commitments in France—which the ADLC imposed in 2022 for a period of five years to “benefit” publishers by ensuring Google’s ongoing negotiations with them were “balanced”—Google has agreed to “a series of corrective measures,” the ADLC said.
Google is not happy with the fine, which it described as “not proportionate” partly because the fine “doesn’t sufficiently take into account the efforts we have made to answer and resolve the concerns raised—in an environment where it’s very hard to set a course because we can’t predict which way the wind will blow next.”
According to Google, regulators everywhere need to clearly define fair use of content when developing search tools and AI models, so that search companies and AI makers always know “whom we are paying for what.” Currently in France, Google contends, the scope of Google’s commitments has shifted from just general news publishers to now also include specialist publications and listings and comparison sites.
The ADLC agreed that “the question of whether the use of press publications as part of an artificial intelligence service qualifies for protection under related rights regulations has not yet been settled,” but noted that “at the very least,” Google was required to “inform publishers of the use of their content for their Bard software.”
Regarding Bard/Gemini, Google said that it “voluntarily introduced a new technical solution called Google-Extended to make it easier for rights holders to opt out of Gemini without impact on their presence in Search.” It has now also committed to better explain to publishers both “how our products based on generative AI work and how ‘Opt Out’ works.”
Google said that it agreed to the settlement “because it’s time to move on” and “focus on the larger goal of sustainable approaches to connecting people with quality content and on working constructively with French publishers.”
“Today’s fine relates mostly to [a] disagreement about how much value Google derives from news content,” Google’s blog said, claiming that “a lack of clear regulatory guidance and repeated enforcement actions have made it hard to navigate negotiations with publishers, or plan how we invest in news in France in the future.”
What changes did Google agree to make?
Google defended its position as “the first and only platform to have signed significant licensing agreements” in France, benefiting 280 French press publishers and “covering more than 450 publications.”
With these publishers, the ADLC found that Google breached requirements to “negotiate in good faith based on transparent, objective, and non-discriminatory criteria,” to consistently “make a remuneration offer” within three months of a publisher’s request, and to provide information for publishers to “transparently assess their remuneration.”
Google also breached commitments to “inform editors and press agencies of the use of their content by its service Bard” and of Google’s decision to link “the use of press agencies’ and publishers’ content by its artificial intelligence service to the display of protected content on services such as Search, Discover and News.”
Regarding negotiations, the ADLC found that Google not only failed to be transparent with publishers about remuneration, but also failed to keep the ADLC informed of information necessary to monitor whether Google was honoring its commitments to fairly pay publishers. Partly “to guarantee better communication,” Google has agreed to appoint a French-speaking representative in its Paris office, along with other steps the ADLC recommended.
According to the ADLC’s announcement (translated from French), Google seemingly acted sketchy in negotiations by not meeting non-discrimination criteria—and unfavorably treating publishers in different situations identically—and by not mentioning “all the services that could generate revenues for the negotiating party.”
“According to the Autorité, not taking into account differences in attractiveness between content does not allow for an accurate reflection of the contribution of each press agency and publisher to Google’s revenues,” the ADLC said.
Also problematically, Google established a minimum threshold of 100 euros for remuneration that it has now agreed to drop.
This threshold, “in its very principle, introduces discrimination between publishers that, below a certain threshold, are all arbitrarily assigned zero remuneration, regardless of their respective situations,” the ADLC found.
