Friday’s Endnotes – 03/15/24

This Computer Scientist Seeks a Future Where AI Development Values Copyright — “This fair use view is far from universal. Disagreement with it is the basis for disputes such as the New York Times’ lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI, which alleges that the technology companies unlawfully used the newspapers’ stories to make chatbots. The issue also motivated computer scientist Ed Newton-Rex to quit his job at Stability AI last November. He has since launched a nonprofit organization called Fairly Trained, which certifies companies that only train their generative AI models on copyrighted material when they get a license to do so.”

ChatGPT in fight over where copyright claim suits will be handled: San Francisco or New York — “Following the [NY] Times [v. Microsoft] case, more cases were filed in New York and under that court’s rules for related cases, they were referred to the same judge who had the Authors Guild [v. OpenAI] class action case. The New York class actions did not go down well with [Joseph] Saveri. Invoking the so-called ‘First-to-File’ rule that, subject to some exceptions, gives priority in federal litigation to the first filed case, on Feb. 12, 2024, Saveri’s clients sought to intervene in the New York litigation in order to ask the New York judge to suspend or dismiss the New York cases in favor of the first filed San Francisco case.”

Authors push back on the growing number of AI ‘scam’ books on Amazon — “[Authors Guild CEO Mary] Rasenberger says the publishers posting these books benefit from increasingly more sophisticated AI tools that can generate low-quality ‘scam’ books quickly. ‘By the time Amazon finds out about them, they’ve already made some money and they move on to something else,’ she says. But the issue of AI-generated books can harm more than just an author’s sales numbers.”

New York Disbars Infamous Copyright Troll — “For years, Richard Liebowitz ran a very successful operation mostly sending threatening letters to companies claiming that they had infringed upon copyrights held by his photographer clients. Under the best of circumstances it’s a niche practice area that’s… kinda shady. But Liebowitz gained a degree of infamy across a number of matters for high-profile missteps in cases that sparked the ire of federal judges.”

Appeal Court’s ruling on copyright makes sense — “The dilemma of the divorced painter. Should you have to share the value of your copyright with your ex? The New Zealand Court of Appeal says yes, you do.” Interesting discussion about whether copyright is property.