this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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Universal Music files $75m lawsuit against Amazon-backed AI firm Anthropic for ripping off Rolling Stones, Beyonce lyrics (www.hollywoodreporter.com)
submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Universal Music files $75m lawsuit against Amazon-backed AI firm Anthropic for ripping off Rolling Stones, Beyonce lyrics::Major players across Hollywood are taking to the courts to address what they argue is mass copyright infringement.

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[–] MossyFeathers@pawb.social 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I actually hope Amazon wins this one. It is pretty idiotic imo that the music industry can ban people from showing song lyrics. Iirc you have to get a license to list song lyrics since they're technically a copyrighted work. I could be wrong on that, but even if I am, this seems like a step towards restricting that ability.

[–] Shazbot@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

It is pretty idiotic imo that the music industry can ban people from showing song lyrics. Iirc you have to get a license to list song lyrics since they’re technically a copyrighted work.

Here's the thing, if its copyright-able you can get a license for it. Amazon already has licenses to sell and stream music, that part of the usage agreement was already negotiated. A simple analogy would be you want to buy three games from a store, you pay for two but leave with three. Obviously the store is not happy with you. You've shown you're legally compliant with two games, yet took the third without paying.

But there are some interesting caveats in the article:

The lawsuit, which is the first from a music publisher against an AI company over the use of lyrics, was filed in the wake of the Authors Guild — representing a host of prominent fiction authors including George R.R. Martin, Jonathan Franzen and John Grisham — suing OpenAI last month.

This makes sense since lyrics aren't all that different from poetry, and whole albums could be considered a collection of short works. So loosening the copyright protections may give AI companies more data to work with, but it would end up hurting authors (lyricists, screen writers, novelists) and related fields. A real world fallout would be SAG-AFTRA strikers losing royalties and bargaining power, while empowering and enriching the big studios' own AI models.

I wanted to see if Anthropic, the company being sued, has the money on hand to pay for licenses, to square up legally if you will. Well, doesn't look like Anthropic is hurting for cash as of 3rd quarter 2023.

Amazon said on Monday that it’s investing up to $4 billion into the artificial intelligence company Anthropic in exchange for partial ownership and Anthropic’s greater use of Amazon Web Services (AWS), the e-commerce giant’s cloud computing platform.

Even if the licenses were 10 million in total, that would leave 3,990,000,000 on hand; or .0025% of what Amazon offered. I don't see how they'd walk away without settling for the licensing fees and legal expenses. They're financially secure and partially owned by a company that is legally compliant with its own handling of intellectual property.

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is the best summary I could come up with:

A trio of major music publishers are stepping into the legal battle against generative artificial intelligence to stop the use of their copyrighted material to train AI systems, this time in a lawsuit against Anthropic.

Universal Music Group, Concord Music Group and ABKCO sued the company in Tennessee federal court Wednesday, accusing it of “systematic and widespread infringement” by copying and distributing lyrics from at least 500 songs from artists such as Katy Perry, the Rolling Stones and Beyoncé.

When asked the lyrics to Katy Perry’s “Roar,” which is owned by Concord, it provided an near-identical copy of the words in the piece.

The publishers argue there’s already an existing market that’s being undercut by Anthropic, which is backed by Amazon, pilfering their material without consent or payment, citing music lyric aggregators and websites that have licensed their works.

The argument is meant to undermine Anthropic’s anticipated fair use defense, which was effectively reined in when the Supreme Court issued its recent decision in Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts v. Goldsmith.

In that case, the majority emphasized that an analysis of whether an allegedly infringing work was sufficiently transformed must be balanced against the “commercial nature of the use.” The music publishers are attempting to establish that Anthropic’s alleged copyright infringement hurt their prospects to profit off of the material by interfering with potential licensing deals for use of their lyrics.

The original article contains 614 words, the summary contains 233 words. Saved 62%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] gnygnygny@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago

Use of their lyrics what for ? Everything Hurst music publishers prospect to profit. This greedy industry doesn't even retribution the artists correctly.

[–] JimmyBigSausage@lemm.ee -4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This may be the tip of the iceburg.