Friday’s Endnotes – 08/04/23

An AI Scraping Tool Is Overwhelming Websites With Traffic — “The people at the head of the new crop of AI companies believe that their technology could replace 80 percent of  jobs in the U.S. and pose ‘massive risks’ to society. We should be skeptical of these claims, but it’s also worth noting that the people building tools they consider to be so disruptive are doing so without ever asking the internet users whose efforts are powering AI if they wish to fuel that technology.”

AI ‘Authorship’ Muddies the Waters of Copyright Law Claims — Copyright expert Zvi Rosen asks, “Is it infringement to use copyrighted works to train AI? Does an AI-created work even have an author, as the Constitution requires for copyright protection? Must an author be a person, and what if the author uses a machine to create?”

Agence France-Presse pursues copyright case against X, formerly known as Twitter — “The news agency announced the legal action in a statement. It said it is seeking payment under European Union intellectual property rules that cover ‘neighboring rights,’ which allow news outlets and publishers to seek payment from digital platforms for the sharing of their work.”

Court Rejects Appeals of Copyright Royalty Board Decision on 2021-2025 Webcasting Royalties — “Three parties appealed the CRB’s June 2021 decision setting the royalties to be paid by webcasters for 2021-2025 (the CRB sets rates in 5-year increments). The NAB and the NRB-NMLC (i.e., the National Religious Broadcasters’ noncommercial music licensing committee) argued that the royalties set for their members should be lower than the rates set by the CRB. SoundExchange, on the other hand, argued that they should be higher.”