Music Publisher Round Hill Files $1 Billion Copyright Infringement Suits Against Suno, Anthropic
- Reference: 0185055974
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/08/19/1931220/music-publisher-round-hill-files-1-billion-copyright-infringement-suits-against-suno-anthropic
- Source link:
> Round Hill is a prominent music publisher whose copyrights include the Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris," Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart," the Kinks' "Lola" and Dio's "Holy Diver." The company provided a list of 500 songs that the defendants had infringed upon. Round Hill said in the suits that the company plans to "amend to list potentially ten thousand or more of their musical compositions," with those damages potentially exceeding $1 billion. "While in other cases for copyright infringement, Defendant has waxed poetic about the necessity of progress and AI's value to society, there is simply no reason -- other than rote expediency -- to have that progress come at the cost of copyrights holders," prominent music attorney Richard Busch, representing Round Hill, wrote in the suits.
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> Round Hill further argued that the latter "'expediency' arguments completely falter" when taking into account Suno and Anthropic's significant cash valuations they've earned while "exploiting illicit copies of copyrighted works, including the Round Hill Works." "There is simply nothing fair about a company using theft to build for purely commercial purposes a multi-billion dollar business while those from which they steal receive nothing," Round Hill said.
Suno also [2]faces a lawsuit from Universal Music Group and Sony Music Group.
[1] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/music/music-industry-news/round-hill-files-lawsuits-against-suno-anthropic-1236675713/
[2] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/08/01/1525210/ai-startup-suno-says-music-industry-suit-aims-to-stifle-competition
Any way for both sides to lose? (Score:3)
Can someone explain how this is a copyright issue? And I don't mean that in the angsty teen "everything should be free" sense, I sincerely don't get how this involves "copying" whatsoever.
AI companies may be playing fast and loose with IP, but using music for training is at worst a private performance for educational purposes. Or is the recording industry back to the good old days of claiming playing a CD is "copying" it into the air, and then our ears are "copying" into our brains? Because that's functionally what the likes of Anthropic are doing with it.
To be clear, I'm neither an AI apologist or fanboy. I find it extremely useful at work, while still fearing it will eventually put us all in a zoo for our own protection (and that's the good outcome).
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> I sincerely don't get how this involves "copying" whatsoever.
Courts still have not decided exactly how AI and the idea of derivative works interact. Until they do there is room for lawsuits like this.
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See they're pretending that those songs were creatio ex nihilo and contain absolutely no [1]musical themes, patterns, or likenesses [youtube.com] of roughly two thousand years of Western musical works. So those completely unique and totally in no way derivative works deserve exclusive copyright protection and ownership by immortal corporations. The only fair duration would be until the heat death of the universe. Also you should pay them fees for even thinking about those songs.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I
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They take a song and they copy it into dynamic memory a couple of times, with copies to interconnects and SSD in between before it gets used to train models.
How is copying a copyright issue? Well, it's in the name for a reason and that reason is why.
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> They take a song and they copy it into dynamic memory
i just learned that merely this already qualifies as reproduction (thus a copyright violation, no question) under us law. yikes!
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> Can someone explain how this is a copyright issue?
lawyers will try, i would assume, for a small fortune. meanwhile a bunch of aggravated slashdotters will no doubt make a solid couch case, hang on ...
IP law needs to be updated (Score:2)
IANAL, but the fair use distinction will need to be settled. And while they are at it, can you cut some slack on YouTube videos?
George Harrison lost the same lawsuit (Score:2)
George Harrison lost a lawsuit in the 70s over his single "My Sweet Lord" because the judge decided he "subconsciously" plagiarized Ronnie Mack's "He's So Fine" despite Harrison claiming he did not, there being no evidence he did, and his providing a Christian hymn "Oh Happy Day" that sounds similar as well which he said he was inspired by instead. Despite all that, he lost. How does all this authorship of AIs not clearly fall under the same subconscious plagiarization precedent, especially when the subcons
Proverbs 22:16, AI edition (Score:2)
“He who oppresses the riches to increase his riches, and he who gives to the rich, will surely come to want more”
That's it? (Score:2)
These are trillion dollar companies owned by the New Kings. That's a rounding error to them.
It's kinda funny in a dystopian way watching our masters fight
Buffy Vs Edward All Over Again (Score:1)
Look at the legal case of "Buffy Vs Edward: Twilight Remixed" and observe that a user created a video made entirely from snips of copyrighted works, making it so that Buffy played by Gellar, was having a conversation with Edward from Twilight. There were no spins on it; they were just straight clips taken at face value, edited in a way that appeared like they could have been speaking to each other.
Lion's Gate tried to have it taken down in 2013, but it was [1]challenged and defeated in court [newmediarights.org] and restored.
[1] https://newmediarights.org/copyright/how_we_defeated_lionsgates_unfair_takedown_buffy_v_edward_and_our_next_battle
Standing on the shoulders of giants (Score:3)
Their argument is (financially) motivated reasoning blatantly ignoring the fact that their artists creations would not exist without the contributions of the artists who came before them.
None of this exists in a vacuum.
Training is analogous to learning. We all learn from others. This is legal.
What is not legal is reproducing and selling someone else's work without permission (copyright infringement), or claiming someone else's work as your own (plagiarism is also copyright infringement).
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> Their argument is (financially) motivated reasoning blatantly ignoring the fact that their artists
They have no artists. They buy existing copyrights and sue people, that's their business.
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Copyright is about reproduction, no distribution necessary.
Fair use is their only defence in the US.
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> Copyright is about reproduction, no distribution necessary.
That distinction is a recent invention. Copyright originally came about as a response to the invention of the printing press, and the subsequent publishing (for sale) of books without compensation to the authors. It was expressly about distribution for profit.
> Fair use is their only defence in the US.
When we in the US created our copyright laws, we expressly stated the purpose as "to promote the progress of science, art, and useful knowledge." Building on what was done before was the core of US copyright law. ...which is where the idea of "fair
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> Training is analogous to learning.
No. Stop pushing that utterly stupid statement. It has neither factual nor legal merit.
Re: Standing on the shoulders of giants (Score:2)
We don't know how the brain works so no it isn't modeled on the brain.
We don't know how learning works but the brain does things with what you've learned that LLMs can't do, so it's surely not working in the same way.
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we do know pretty well how "copying" and "reproducing" works and it's definitely not that.
otoh the process of creating these models has been universally called "training" and "learning" for a while, and that's because there is a obvious conceptual similarity with these human processes, even though we do not know exactly how neurons go about it, or to what degree their process shares mathematical principles with, well, deep learning .
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Then the same company will have to sue every kid who plays Stairway to Heaven or Blackbird on the guitar they got for Christmas, in order to maintain the same merit. It's not about the training; it's about the money. The suit only exists because Anthropic has money.
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>> Training is analogous to learning.
> No. Stop pushing that utterly stupid statement. It has neither factual nor legal merit.
They are indeed analogous. Copyright concerns only the performances and reproduction of works and their derivatives. It does not impose any restrictions on use including learning by a human or machine.
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> Training [LLMs] is analogous to learning [the world's knowledge].
Then why are LLMs so fucking stupid?