Friday’s Endnotes – 10/25/24

Thom Yorke and Julianne Moore join thousands of creatives in AI warning — “‘The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted,’ reads the statement. Thousands of creative professionals from the worlds of literature, music, film, theatre and television have given their backing to the statement, with authors including Kazuo Ishiguro, Ann Patchett, and Kate Mosse, musicians including the Cure’s Robert Smith as well as the composer Max Richter and actors including Kevin Bacon, Rosario Dawson and F Murray Abraham.”

Former OpenAI Researcher Says the Company Broke Copyright Law — “Mr. Balaji, 25, who has not taken a new job and is working on what he calls ‘personal projects,’ is among the first employees to leave a major A.I. company and speak out publicly against the way these companies have used copyrighted data to create their technologies. A former vice president at the London start-up Stability AI, which specializes in image- and audio-generating technologies, has made similar arguments.”

Dow Jones and New York Post Sue AI Startup Perplexity, Alleging ‘Massive’ Copyright Infringement — “News Corp‘s Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post have sued Perplexity, a startup that calls itself an ‘AI-powered Swiss Army Knife for information discovery and curiosity,’ alleging copyright infringement.”

Copyright Claims Board Releases Key Statistics — “The data paints a mostly positive picture of the CCB. It’s seeing a steady stream of claims, hasn’t become a haven for ‘copyright trolls,’ is widely used to reach settlements and seems to be operating relatively smoothly. All in all, the CCB seems to be working as intended.”

Jurisdiction “Found”: Navigating E-Commerce Boundaries in Copyright Disputes — “In a copyright case, the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit determined that the district court had jurisdiction over two Chinese companies that consented to jurisdiction in any judicial district in which a third-party e-commerce company could be ‘found.’ The Tenth Circuit concluded that whether an e-commerce company is ‘found’ in a district for purposes of jurisdiction is determined based on whether its officers or agents carry out the company’s business there, not on the manner in which it does business.”