Copyright Claims Board Celebrates First Anniversary Without a Troll Party — “When the Copyright Claims Board was first introduced, there was quite a lot of pushback. Several opponents feared that ‘copyright trolls’ would abuse the system to launch a wave of claims against alleged online pirates. That fear didn’t materialize.”
Bad Bunny and music stars want a copyright case over reggaeton beats thrown out — “Bad Bunny’s lawyers argue the plaintiffs are attempting to ‘monopolize practically the entire reggaeton musical genre for themselves’ by claiming copyright ownership of musical compositions sampled by over 100 artists in more than 1,600 songs. Bad Bunny himself is accused in the lawsuit of copyright infringement for 77 songs, the motion said. The foundational drum beats come from Jamaican dancehall duo Steely & Clevie, composed of Wycliffe Johnson and Cleveland Browne, who co-wrote ‘Fish Market’ in 1989. The heavily sampled ‘Dem Bow’ rhythm comes from a song of the same name co-authored with Shabba Ranks, which itself takes from ‘Fish Market.’ Johnson passed away in 2009.”
Online News Act receives Royal Assent — “Millions of Canadians now access their news online. Digital platform act as the gatekeepers in today’s digital news marketplace. The Online News Act levels the playing field between news businesses and large digital platforms to create greater fairness to ensure sustainability of the news industry. Through a market-based approach, it encourages voluntary commercial agreements between platforms and news businesses with minimal government intervention, as well as crucial safeguards to preserve the independence of the press.”
Generative AI is a Minefield for Copyright Law — “As generative AI art tools like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion have been thrust into the limelight, so too have questions about ownership and authorship. These tools’ generative ability is the result of training them with scores of prior artworks, from which the AI learns how to create artistic outputs. Should the artists whose art was scraped to train the models be compensated? Who owns the images that AI systems produce? Is the process of fine-tuning prompts for generative AI a form of authentic creative expression?”