While demand for vinyl continues to climb, independent U.S. manufacturers face steep tariffs on the raw materials they need—like nickel, PVC, steel, and paperboard. It’s a textbook case of policy failure that rewards offshore production and punishes domestic creators.

Copyright Litigation

Creators Rally Behind Cyril Vetter’s Termination Rights Case In The Fifth Circuit (MusicTechPolicy/Chris Castle)

Spotify Stream Share Threshold

Spotify’s Paradox: An Algorithm Can Spot Breakout Artists… But Doesn’t Pay Them (MusicTechSolutions/Chris Castle)

Artificial Intelligence Legislation

@Unite4Copyright: Say "No" to Unlicensed AI Training (TheTrichordist)

Republicans’ bid to stop state AI laws heads for a crucial vote (Washington Post/Will Oremus)

Tail Or Dog? The Ai Moratorium Mess Is An Existential Constitutional Issue And A Divisive Political Reality(MusicTechPolicy/Chris Castle)

Congress Moves Closer to Ban on AI Regulation. It Isn’t a Sure Thing (Barons/Joe Light & Adam Levine)

Texas AI Governance Law Signed by Governor (National Law Review/Lynn Freedman)

Maine Enacts AI Chatbot Disclosure Law (HoganLovells/Mark Brennan)

Artificial Intelligence Litigation

Comparing Judge Alsup and Judge Chhabria’s fair use decisions in Anthropic, Meta cases (ChatGPT Is Eating the World/Ed Lee)

Fair Use Decision Fumbles Training Analysis but Sends Clear Piracy Message (Kevin Madigan/Copyright Alliance)

Ticketing

How Scalper Loans And Ticket Financing Drive Up Prices And Shut Out True Fans (MusicTechPolicy/Chris Castle)

C Castle 6/26/25 C Castle 6/26/25

25: AI Moratorium is Back, TX Ticketing Bill is Dead, State AI Legislation Advances, AI Opt Out Violates Berne

AI Moratorium Battles • Ticketing Updates • EU Opt Out • State AI Laws

This week in Artist Rights Weekly:
The AI Moratorium fight intensifies, with state AG opposition and legal challenges mounting. The Artist Rights Institute updates you on key ticketing legislation in Texas, Louisiana, and North Carolina, explore EU copyright battles over opt-out formalities, and bring you the latest on US state AI regulation trends.

Plus: A new survey for songwriters about forming a certified union — please participate!

Featured Action: Songwriters Union Survey

We are surveying songwriters about whether they want to form a certified union.
👉 Please fill out our short Survey Monkey confidential survey here! Thanks!

Featured AI Article

📄 Bringing transparency to the data used to train artificial intelligence (Beth Stackpole/MIT Sloan)

A team of multidisciplinary researchers, including professor Sandy Pentland and others from MIT, created the Data Provenance Initiative to tackle the data transparency challenge head-on.

AI Moratorium Shenanigans

Our latest The Artist Rights Watch podcast on the AI moratorium that just won't die!

🎙️ S4E8 — The Hidden AI Power Grab Inside Trump’s OBBBA Bill (Artist Rights Watch Podcast)

Constitutional Challenges to AI Moratorium (Chris Castle/MusicTech.Solutions)

GOP lawmakers want to stop Alabama and other states from regulating AI. What you need to know (Associated Press)

40 State Attorneys General Oppose AI Moratorium

Senate Republicans Revise Ban on State AI Regulations in Bid to Preserve Controversial Provision (Associated Press)

📄 One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R. 1) — Full Text (Congress.gov)

📄 Byrd Rule — Senate Glossary Summary

Tickets

Texas:
Texas ticketing bill SB 1820 is dead after Texas Legislature adjourned until 2027 on June 2.

Louisiana:
Louisiana SB 188 (2025) has not been voted on by either body.
Key features:

Requires original ticket prices to be printed.
Caps resale prices at face value + fees + taxes.
Bans speculative ticket sales (tickets not owned).
Mandates full refunds for canceled events or failed delivery.
Limits secondary platform fees to 10%.
Strong consumer protection focus.

North Carolina:
North Carolina HB 598, based on a failed ALEC model bill, is still in committee.
Key provisions:

Bans use of deceptive URLs on resale platforms
Mandates “all-in” pricing.
Prohibits ticket issuers from restricting resale.
Bars price floors/ceilings or resale penalties.
Requires delivery of electronic tickets within 72 hours.

EU Opt Out

The Great Flip: Is Opt Out A Prohibited Formality Under Berne? (Lokesh Vyas and Yogesh Badwal/Infojustice)

State AI Laws

Texas lawmakers push to regulate AI in government and the tech industry (Transparency Coalition)

📄 US State AI Governance Legislation Tracker — Download

C Castle 5/29/25 C Castle 5/29/25

@ArtistRights Newsletter 5/26/25

Jay Gilbert and Chris Castle discuss planning your record release, check the Artist Rights Institute's Financial Education vertical for Jay's excellent slides and release planner template.

New Survey for Songwriters: We are surveying songwriters about whether they want to form a certified union. Please fill out our short Survey Monkey confidential survey here! Thanks!

Featured Post: What Bell Labs and Xerox PARC Can Teach Us About the Future of Music

AI Safe Harbor Moratorium in Big Beautiful Bill

Human Artistry Campaign Opposes Safe Harbor Moratorium

Human Artistry Campaign Letter Opposing AI Safe Harbor Moratorium

Massive State Opposition to AI Regulation Safe Harbor Moratorium in the 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act' (H. Con. Res. 14)(Artist Rights Watch/Chris Castle)

Lars Murray Unlimited Supply Podcast, How Nashville Congressmen Through Nashville Under the Bus on Moratorium

Now What? Can the AI Moratorium Survive the Byrd Rule on Germaneness? (MusicTech.Solutions/Chris Castle)

National Council of State Legislatures Opposes Moratorium on State AI Legislation

Your Morning Coffee Podcast features AI Moratorium Opposition

Ticketing DOJ Comments

Randy Nichols of NITO comment with DOJ on scalping

Artificial Intelligence/UK Legislation

The Fully Vested Nick Clegg's Mea Culpa on his Role in Massive AI Theft Reveals Too Much (MusicTechPolicy/Chris Castle)

Regrets? UK tech secretary has a few over his controversial plans for AI and copyright (Charting Gen AI/Graham Lovelace)

C Castle 5/25/25 C Castle 5/25/25

@ArtistRights Institute Newsletter 5/19/25

The Artist Rights Watch podcast returns for another season! This week's episode features Chris Castle on An Artist's Guide to Record Releases Part 2. Download it here or subscribe wherever you get your audio podcasts.

New Survey for Songwriters: We are surveying songwriters about whether they want to form a certified union. Please fill out our short Survey Monkey confidential survey here! Thanks!

Restatement of Copyright

Copyright Alliance CEO and 13 Others Resign from ALI’s Copyright Restatement Project (Letter to ALI)

There is No Unity: The Copyright Restatement Starts to Crumble (Chris Castle/MusicTechPolicy)

Artificial Intelligence: Legislation

Big Beautiful AI Safe Harbor asks If David Sacks wants to Make America Screwed Again? (Trichordist Editor/The Trichordist)

God Bless Texas: The New AI Safe Harbor Bill Will Fail (Chris Castle/MusicTechPolicy)

Artificial Intelligence: SAG-AFTRA Contracts

SAG-AFTRA’s New Audio Commercials Contract Revamps Structure, Expands AI Protections. (Inside Radio)

Artificial Intelligence: Business

Translation: The Top 5 China domestic large models contend for supremacy, a decisive battle in AGI: Bytedance, Alibaba, Stepfun [阶跃星辰], Zhipu and DeepSeek
(Xinzhiyuan)

Netflix will use AI to make ad breaks look less like ad breaks (Emma Roth/The Verge)

15 AI Books to Demystify the World of Artificial Intelligence in 2025 (Fadeke Adegbuyi/Digital Ocean)

Internet Accountability

Apple Joins the Push for Kids Online Safety Act (Will Oremus/Washington Post)

Books

Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control, Stuart J. Russell

Weapons of Math Destruction, Cathy O'Neil

C Castle 5/5/25 C Castle 5/5/25

@ArtistRights Institute Newsletter 5/5/25

New Survey for Songwriters: We are surveying songwriters about whether they want to form a certified union. Please fill out our short Survey Monkey confidential survey here! Thanks!

Texas Scalpers Bill of Rights Legislation

Can this Texas House bill help curb high ticket prices? Depends whom you ask (Marcheta Fornoff/KERA News)

Texas lawmakers target ticket fees and resale restrictions in new legislative push (Abigail Velez/CBS Austin)

@ArtistRights Institute opposes Texas Ticketing Legislation the "Scalpers' Bill of Rights" (Chris Castle/Artist Rights Watch)

Ticket reselling is a billion dollar business fueled by a frustrating reality for music fans - scalpers keep ending up with many of the best tickets. pic.twitter.com/MKCip4Yydx
— CBS Saturday Morning (@cbssaturday) April 5, 2025

Streaming

Spotify’s Earnings Points To A “Catch Up” On Songwriter Royalties At Crb For Royalty Justice (Chris Castle/MusicTechPolicy)

Streaming Is Now Just As Crowded With Ads As Old School TV (Rick Porter/Hollywood Reporter)

Spotify Stock Falls On Music Streamer's Mixed Q1 Report (Patrick Seitz/Investors Business Daily)

Economy

The Slowdown at Ports Is a Warning of Rough Economic Seas Ahead (Aarian Marshall/Wired)

What To Expect From Wednesday's Federal Reserve Meeting (Diccon Hyatt/Investopedia)

Spotify Q1 2025 Earnings Call: Daniel Ek Talks Growth, Pricing, Superfan Products, And A Future Where The Platform Could Reach 1bn Subscribers (Murray Stassen/Music Business Worldwide)

Artist Rights and AI

SAG-AFTRA National Board Approves Commercials Contracts That Prevent AI, Digital Replicas Without Consent (JD Knapp/The Wrap)

Generative AI providers see first steps for EU code of practice on content labels (Luca Bertuzzi/Mlex)

A Judge Says Meta’s AI Copyright Case Is About ‘the Next Taylor Swift’ (Kate Knibbs/Wired)

Antitrust

Google faces September trial on ad tech antitrust remedies (David Shepardson and Jody Godoy/Reuters)

TikTok

Ireland fines TikTok 530 million euros for sending EU user data to China (Ryan Browne/CNBC)

C Castle 4/15/25 C Castle 4/15/25

The EU AI Act: A view from Europe with Helienne Lindvall, President, European Composer and Songwriter Alliance

C Castle 4/15/25 C Castle 4/15/25

@ArtistRights Institute Newsletter 4/14/25

The Artist Rights Watch podcast returns for another season! This week's episode features AI Legislation, A View from Europe: Helienne Lindvall, President of the European Composer and Songwriter Alliance (ECSA) and ARI Director Chris Castle in conversation regarding current issues for creators regarding the EU AI Act and the UK Text and Data Mining legislation. Download it here or subscribe wherever you get your audio podcasts.

New Survey for Songwriters: We are surveying songwriters about whether they want to form a certified union. Please fill out our short Survey Monkey confidential survey here! Thanks!

AI Litigation: Kadrey v. Meta

Law Professors Reject Meta's Fair Use Defense in Friend of the Court Brief

gov.uscourts.cand.415175.525.0Download

Ticketing
Viagogo failing to prevent potentially unlawful practices, listings on resale site suggest that scalpers are speculatively selling tickets they do not yet have (Rob Davies/The Guardian)

ALEC Astroturf Ticketing Bill Surfaces in North Carolina Legislation

ALEC Ticketing Bill Surfaces in Texas to Rip Off Texas Artists (Chris Castle/MusicTechPolicy)

International AI Legislation

Brazil’s AI Act: A New Era of AI Regulation (Daniela Atanasovska and Lejla Robeli/GDPR Local)

Why robots.txt won't get it done for AI Opt Outs (Chris Castle/MusicTechPolicy)

Feature Translation: How has the West’s misjudgment of China’s AI ecosystem distorted the global technology competition landscape (Jeffrey Ding/ChinAI)

Unethical AI Training Harms Creators and Society, Argues AI Pioneer (Ed Nawotka/Publishers Weekly)

AI Ethics

Céline Dion Calls Out AI-Generated Music Claiming to Feature the Iconic Singer Without Her Permission (Marina Watts/People)

Splice CEO Discusses Ethical Boundaries of AI in Music (Nilay Patel/The Verge)

Spotify's Bold AI Gamble Could Disrupt The Entire Music Industry (Bernard Marr/Forbes)

Books

C Castle 4/8/25 C Castle 4/8/25

@Artist Rights Institute Newsletter 4/7/25

The Artist Rights Institute's news digest Newsletter

The Artist Rights Watch podcast returns for another season! First episode is Tim Kappel discussing the Vetter v. Resnik landmark copyright termination case. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts.

New Survey for Songwriters: We are surveying songwriters about whether they want to form a certified union. Please fill out our short Survey Monkey confidential survey here! Thanks!

Streaming Meltdown

White Noise Is Hugely Popular on Streaming Services. Should It Be Devalued? (Kristin Robinson/Billboard)

DANIEL EK POCKETS ANOTHER $27.6M FROM SELLING SPOTIFY SHARES – CASHING OUT OVER $750M SINCE 2023 (Mandy Daludgug/MusicBusinessWorldwide)

AI Litigation

U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein order in New York Times et al v. Microsoft, OpenAI et al

NYT v MSFT-OpenAI MTDDownload

Judge explains order for New York Times in OpenAI copyright case (Blake Brittan/Reuters)

OpenAI, Google reject UK’s AI copyright plan (Joseph Bambridge/Politico EU)

Mechanical Licensing Collective

Shhh...It's a Secret! How is the MLC "Hedge Fund" Performing in the Global Market Crash (Chris Castle/MusicTechPolicy)

Ticketing

If it Looks Like a Duck and Quacks Like a Duck, Deny Everything: The ALEC Ticketing Bill Surfaces in Texas to Rip Off Artists (Chris Castle/MusicTechPolicy)

Tickets to Beyonce’s ‘Cowboy Carter’ Shows Bottoming Out at $25 In LA, New Jersey (Ashley King/Digital Music News)

TikTok Divestment

TikTok Extended Again (Chris Castle/MusicTech.Solutions)

And After All That, TikTok Could Still Go Poof (Paul Resnikoff/Digital Music News)

Books

Understanding the China Threat by Lianchao Han and Bradley A. Thayer

Brookings experts’ reading list on US-China strategic relations

Global Soft Power Index 2024 by Konrad Jagodzinski/Brand Finance

C Castle 4/2/25 C Castle 4/2/25

@Artist Rights Institute Newsletter 3/31/25

The Artist Rights Institute's news digest Newsletter

New Survey for Songwriters: We are surveying songwriters about whether they want to form a certified union. Please fill out our short Survey Monkey confidential survey here! Thanks!

Ticketing

Executive Order on Combating Unfair Practices in the Live Entertainment Market

Music Industry reacts to Executive Order on Ticket Scalping (Bruce Houghton/Hypebot)

What Hath Trump Wrought: The Effect of the Anti-Scalping Executive Order on StubHub’s IPO (Chris Castle/MusicTech.Solutions)

StubHub IPO Filing

Copyright Litigation

Merlin sues TikTok rival Triller for breach of contract over allegedly unpaid music licensing fees (Daniel Tencer/Music Business Worldwide)

Artificial Intelligence: Legislation

Artificial intelligence firms should pay artists and musicians for using their work amid uproar over Labour's plans to exempt them from copyright laws, according to a new poll of Brits (Chris Pollard/Daily Mail)

European Union’s latest draft AI Code of Practice renders copyright ‘meaningless,’ rightsholders warn (Mandy Dalugdug/Music Business Worldwide)

Artificial Intelligence
The Style Returns: Some notes on ChatGPT and Studio Ghibli (Andres Guadamuz/TechnoLlama)

OpenAI's Preemption Request Highlights State Laws' Downsides (Oliver Roberts/Bloomberg Law)

Copyright: Termination Rights

Update on Vetter v. Resnik case (Chris Castle/MusicTechPolicy)

https://youtu.be/yhSOpZo1k_8

C Castle 4/2/25 C Castle 4/2/25

Google and Its Confederate AI Platforms Want Retroactive Absolution For AI Training Wrapped in the American Flag

[This post is based on an excerpt from the Artist Rights Institute's submission to the National Science Foundation's Request for Information that I wrote. The full submission is linked below.]

It is crucial for policymakers to have a clear understanding of where we are today with respect to the collision between AI and artist rights, including copyright. The corrosion of artist rights by the richest corporations in commercial history is not something that may happen in the future. Massive infringement has already occurred,[1] is occurring this minute, and will continue to occur into the future at an increasing rate.

Companies like Google would have you believe that some vague “balancing” should be adopted in the future,[2] but the reality—the truth—is that Google and its confederates have already done the balancing act and may well have both allocated markets and fixed prices (at zero in the case of works of copyright). Google put its adjudicated monopolist’s[3] big thumb on that scale in its own favor, which is as surprising as gambling at Rick’s Café Américian.

Depending on how far back one focuses, massive infringement appears to have been part of the plan that started with Google Books now twenty years ago. As the tech historian George Dyson observed in 2005 after a trip to the Googleplex during the Google Books digitization craze:

My visit to Google? Despite the whimsical furniture and other toys, I felt I was entering a 14th-century cathedral—not in the 14th century but in the 12th century, while it was being built. Everyone was busy carving one stone here and another stone there, with some invisible architect getting everything to fit. The mood was playful, yet there was a palpable reverence in the air. “We are not scanning all those books to be read by people,” explained one of my hosts after my talk. “We are scanning them to be read by an AI.”[4]

Google’s plan[5] with Google Books was likely no different than the company’s plan for AI—seek forgiveness through deception, not permission. Or better yet, seek retroactive absolution by litigation or legislation.

And just like the company did in 2005 with Google Books, they want you to believe that their massive infringement is not a crime, it’s about “innovation” versus “regulation,” except this time it’s all wrapped up in the American flag. It’s not stealing, it’s the “AI gap.” And what red-blooded American could be against stopping China in the AI race because China ignores copyright. We should be just like them and protect the machines.

OpenAI’s filing[6] in this RFI also reveals this backwards thinking. They tell the Foundation is not that China fails to respect human expression, it’s that China fails to protect AI training. “Today, CCP-controlled China has a number of strategic advantages, including…[i]ts ability to benefit from copyright arbitrage being created by democratic nations that do not clearly protect AI training by statute, like the US, or that reduce the amount of training data through an opt-out regime for copyright holders, like the EU.”[7] Yes, the “copyright arbitrage” is not that the US offers greater protection for human expression, it’s that the US fails to protect the machines enough.

And the cherry on top is that OpenAI misleads[8] the Foundation by citing to the EU’s highly controversial “opt-out” regime.[9] That regime is not long for this world and likely violates the Berne Convention’s prohibition on formalities for starters.[10] Similar prohibitions are included in other international treaties to which the US, UK and EU are parties which makes OpenAI’s misleading assertion even more odious.[11] A separate opt-out regime has been rejected by thousands of commenters in the UK IPO consultation on the Government’s highly controversial “Data (Use and Access) Bill”[12] that drew thousands of comments in opposition and which failed miserably in the House of Lords.

Both Google and OpenAI would wrap themselves in the American flag in their appeal to jingoistic imagery of Silicon Valley fighting the good fight for American innovation against the Chinese Communist Party. Given the commercial history of Silicon Valley and the People’s Republic of China,[13] their buy-American bromides make for interesting reading if you can see past the oozing irony. And the hypocrisy.

What's Good for General Bullmoose is Good for the USA!

This commercial jingo is nothing new. A highlight of the classic American musical Lil’ Abner[14] is the song “[w]hat’s good for General Bullmoose is good for the USA.”[15] The song uses the character “Bashington T. Bullmoose” toparody former General Motors’ president Charles Wilson who told the Senate Armed Services Committee that "What is good for the country is good for General Motors."[16] The statements by OpenAI, Google and we expect many others to the Foundation that respecting copyright will create an “AI gap” and impede the U.S. in the “AI race” will go down in history with these risible statements by Bullmoose (and Wilson)—unless the AI rewrites the history. For now, let us savory the irony while we still can.

It must also be said that wherever the Foundation ends up on protection of artist rights for America’s AI Action Plan, the tech giants will likely view that position as a starting place for erosion, even if they get exactly what they want from the U.S. government. This is certainly the position they have taken with other safe harbor abuse such as the “DMCA” safe harbor.[17] As the Copyright Alliance testified to Congress in 2020:

The primary problem is that section 512 has been so misinterpreted by the courts [in litigation brought by copyright owners trying to use the DMCA for what they thought was its intended purpose] that service providers have little risk and need only do the absolute minimum required under the DMCA. All the while, copyright owners are being devastated by online infringement.[18]

We fully expect the same treatment with AI under a new version of rules established by Mr. Schmidt’s cabal. We are grateful to the Foundation for establishing the transparency necessary for human culture to survive.

[1] Cade Metz, Cecilia Kang, Sheera Frenkel, Stuart A. Thompson and Nico Grant, “How Tech Giants Cut Corners to Harvest Data for AI,” New York Times (April 8, 2024) available at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/06/technology/tech-giants-harvest-data-artificial-intelligence.html (“Google transcribed YouTube videos to harvest text for its A.I. models, five people with knowledge of the company’s practices said. That potentially violated the copyrights to the videos, which belong to their creators….Google said that its A.I. models “are trained on some YouTube content,” which was allowed under agreements with YouTube creators, and that the company did not use data from office apps outside of an experimental program.”)

[2] Google, Response to the National Science Foundation’s and Office of Science & Technology Policy’s Request for Information on the Development of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Plan, Nat. Sci. Found. Docket No. NSF_FRDOC_0001 (Mar. 13, 2025) at 5, hereafter “Google filing.”

[3] United States v. Google LLC, No. 20-cv-3010, 2024 WL 3647498 (D.D.C. Aug. 5, 2024).

[4] George Dyson, Conversation: Technology (Oct. 23, 2005) available at https://www.edge.org/conversation/george_dyson-turings-cathedral

[5] Arguably, the Google Books case (Authors Guild v. Google, Inc., 804 F.3d 202 (2d Cir. 2015)) did not address using the Google Books corpus for AI training as a permitted non-display use. Maybe it should have. Google Books played a significant role in Google's AI development, particularly in the early stages. By digitizing millions of books, Google created a vast dataset that was instrumental in training natural language processing (NLP) models. This initiative helped Google refine its search algorithms, improve language understanding, and develop tools like Google Translate. Google's NLP training draws from a variety of sources, including publicly available datasets and proprietary data. For example, Google's BERT model was pre-trained using large text corpora like Wikipedia and other publicly available datasets. Of course, Google’s use of Wikipedia in its AI likely violates the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC BY-SA 3.0) used by Wikipedia. Google has contributed to Wikipedia and its related entities in various ways. For instance, Google has provided financial support to the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia. In 2010, Google donated $2 million to the foundation, and in 2019, it contributed an additional $3 million. Moreover, Google and Wikimedia Enterprise began a partnership in 2021. This collaboration allows Google to access Wikimedia's content more efficiently for its services, such as search results and knowledge panel. Wikipedia has never made a claim against Google for violating its terms of use and likely will never make such a claim.

[6] OpenAI, Response to the National Science Foundation’s and Office of Science & Technology Policy’s Request for Information on the Development of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Plan, Nat. Sci. Found. Docket No. NSF_FRDOC_0001 (Mar. 13, 2025) available at https://cdn.openai.com/global-affairs/ostp-rfi/ec680b75-d539-4653-b297-8bcf6e5f7686/openai-response-ostp-nsf-rfi-notice-request-for-information-on-the-development-of-an-artificial-intelligence-ai-action-plan.pdf hereafter “OpenAI filing.”

[7] OpenAI filing at 4.

[8] Indeed, see Jennifer Rankin, EU accused of leaving ‘devastating’ copyright loophole in AI Act, The Guardian (Feb. 19, 2025) available at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/19/eu-accused-of-leaving-devastating-copyright-loophole-in-ai-act (“Axel Voss, a German centre-right member of the European parliament, who played a key role in writing the EU’s 2019 copyright directive, said that law was not conceived to deal with generative AI models: systems that can generate text, images or music with a simple text prompt.”) and see Paul Keller, _AI and Copyrights: A Convergence of Opt-Outs, Open_Future (Nov. 29, 2025) available at https://openfuture.eu/blog/ai-and-copyright-convergence-of-opt-outs/ (The article critiques the EU's opt-out regime for AI training, arguing it may hinder innovation and create practical challenges for implementation. It highlights concerns about balancing intellectual property rights with technological progress and questions the feasibility of enforcing machine-readable opt-outs effectively in a rapidly evolving AI landscape.)

[9] See, e.g., Wouter van Wengen and Radboud Ribbert, EU AI Act’s Opt-Out Trend May Limit Data Use for Training AI Models available at https://www.gtlaw.com/en/insights/2024/7/eu-ai-acts-opt-out-trend-may-limit-data-use-for-training-ai-models (The EU AI Act introduces an opt-out mechanism for copyright holders, allowing them to reserve their works from being used for AI training. This aligns with the EU's Text and Data Mining Directive, ensuring lawful access to data while balancing innovation and intellectual property rights. Full enforcement begins in 2024.); but see Voss supra n. 8 stating that the 2019 EU Copyright Directive was never intended to deal with generative AI.

[10] See Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works art. 5(2), Sept. 28, 1979, S. Treaty Doc. No. 99-27.

[11] See, e.g., Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property art. 9(1), Apr. 15, 1994, 1869 U.N.T.S. 299 [hereinafter TRIPS] (“Members shall comply with Articles 1 through 21 of the Berne Convention (1971) and the Appendix thereto.”); WIPO Copyright Treaty art. 1(4), Dec. 20, 1996, 2186 U.N.T.S. 121 (extending protection to computer programs and databases: “Contracting Parties shall comply with Articles 1 to 21 and the Appendix of the Berne Convention.”); WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty art. 20, Dec. 20, 1996, 2186 U.N.T.S. 203 (extending protection to sound recordings and certain performances: “The enjoyment and exercise of the rights provided for in this Treaty shall not be subject to any formality.”); see also Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances art. 17, June 24, 2012, 51 I.L.M. 1214 (extending protection to audiovisual fixations of performances and certain unfixed performances: “The enjoyment and exercise of the rights provided for in this Treaty shall not be subject to any formality.”).

[12] Available at https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3825.

[13] See, e.g., Cheang Ming, Google is blocked in China, but that’s not stopping it from opening an A.I. center there, CNBC (Dec. 13, 2017) available at https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/13/alphabets-google-opens-china-ai-centre.html. Google opened an AI research center in Beijing in 2017, focusing on natural language processing and machine learning. This center aimed to tap into China's talent pool and contribute to Google’s AI advancements. Microsoft has a significant footprint in China, including its AI and Research division. The company operates research labs in Beijing and Shanghai, which have contributed to advancements in computer vision, speech recognition, and natural language understanding. Microsoft's Azure cloud platform is also available in China through a partnership with 21Vianet, a local data center operator. This collaboration allows Microsoft to comply with Chinese regulations while providing AI and cloud services to local businesses. IBM has been active in China for decades, with its Watson AI platform playing a key role in the company's PRC operations. NVIDIA has a strong presence in China. Its GPUs are widely used by Chinese tech companies for AI training and deployment. NVIDIA has also partnered with local firms to develop AI applications in areas such as autonomous driving and smart cities. Apple has integrated AI into its products and services, such as Siri and facial recognition technology. The company relies heavily on China for manufacturing and has invested in local R&D centers.

[14] Li’l Abner (1956), book by Norman Panama and Melvin Frank, based on the comic by Al Capp.

[15] Music by Johnny Mercer and Lyrics by Gene De Paul.

[16] Charles Erwin Wilson, Confirmation of Charles Erwin Wilson as Secretary of Defense, Senate Armed Services Committee (Jan. 14, 1953).

[17] 17 U.S.C. §512.

[18] Copyright Alliance CEO Keith Kupferschmid, Senate Judiciary Intellectual Property Subcommittee, The Role of Private Agreements and Existing Technology in Curbing Online Piracy (Dec. 15, 2020) available at https://files.constantcontact.com/d2e8d4e5501/cfec37f5-261e-4c6d-a19e-335a2d52e258.pdf

Artist Rights Institute Comment NSF RFI AI Action Plan v 2Download

C Castle 2/25/25 C Castle 2/25/25

Newsletter, February 25

UK Intellectual Property Office Copyright and AI Consultation

*Artist Rights Institute’s Submission in IPO Consultation*

Download

News Media Association “Make it Fair” Campaign at AI Consultation

Artists Protest at IPO Consultation

The Times (Letters to the Editor): Times letters: Protecting UK’s creative copyright against AI

The Telegraph (James Warrington, Dominic Penna): Kate Bush accuses ministers of silencing musicians in copyright row

BBC News (Paul Glynn): Artists release silent album in protest at AI copyright proposals

Reuters (Sam Tabahriti): Musicians release silent album to protest UK’s AI copyright changes

Forbes (Leslie Katz): 1,000-Plus Musicians Drop ‘Silent Album’ To Protest AI Copyright Tweaks

The Daily Mail (Andy Jehring): More than 1,000 musicians including Kate Bash and The Clash release ‘silent album’ to show the impact Labour’s damaging AI plans would have on the music industry

The Guardian (Dan Milmo): Kate Bush and Damon Albarn among 1,000 artists on silent AI protest album

The Guardian (Dan Milmo): Why are creatives fighting UK government AI proposals on copyright?

The Independent (Martyn Landi): Kate Bush and Annie Lennox have released a completely silent album – here’s why

The Evening Standard (Martyn Landi): Musicians protest against AI copyright plans with silent album release

The Independent (Chris Blackhurst): Voices: AI cannot be allowed to thrive at the expense of the UK’s creative industries

The Independent (Holly Evans): UK creative industries launch campaign against AI tech firms’ content use

Silent Album: Is This What We Want Campaign?

More than 1,000 musicians have come together to release Is This What You Want?, an album protesting the UK government’s proposed changes to copyright law.

In late 2024, the UK government proposed changing copyright law to allow artificial intelligence companies to build their products using other people’s copyrighted work – music, artworks, text, and more – without a licence.

The musicians on this album came together to protest this. The album consists of recordings of empty studios and performance spaces, representing the impact we expect the government’s proposals would have on musicians’ livelihoods.

All profits from the album are being donated to the charity Help Musicians.

C Castle 2/17/25 C Castle 2/17/25

Newsletter, February 17

#FreeJImmyLai: Update on Chinese Communist Party Free Speech Enemy No. 1: Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong publisher of Apple Daily

Why case of jailed Briton Jimmy Lai is major sticking point for [UK Prime Minister] Keir Starmer’s relations with China (Sky News/Alix Culbertson)

American Music Fairness Act

@MARSHABLACKBURN, @REPDARRELLISSA, COLLEAGUES REINTRODUCE AMERICAN MUSIC FAIRNESS ACT #AMFA ENSURE ARTIST PAY FOR RADIO PLAY #IRESPECTMUSIC (MusicTechPolicy/Editor Charlie)

Copyright Royalty Board

What Must be Done in CRB 5? (MusicTechSolutions/Chris Castle)

Copyright

The MTP Interview: Attorney Tim Kappel and Abby North Discuss Vetter v. Resnick with Chris Castle

First of Its Kind Decision Finds AI Training Is Not Fair Use (Copyright Alliance/Kevin Madigan)

‘Mass theft’: Thousands of artists call for AI art auction to be cancelled. (The Guardian/Dan Milmo)

Artificial Intelligence in China

Featured Translation: China’s most humble profession is being squeezed out by Artificial Challenged Intelligence (ChinaAI/Jeffrey Ding)

Great Power Competition in AI

It’s Not Just Technology: What it Means to be a Global Leader in AI (Just Security/Kayla Blomquist and Keegan McBride)

AI, Great Power Competition & National Security (MIT Press/Daedalus/Eric Schmidt)

AI at a Geopolitical Crossroads: The Tension Between Acceleration and Regulation (US Institute for Peace/Andrew Cheatham)

C Castle 2/16/25 C Castle 2/16/25

What Must Be Done in CRB 5?

We are rapidly approaching the next rate-setting proceeding before the three-judge panel at the Copyright Royalty Board for the royalty payable to copyright owners (and ultimately to songwriters) for exploitations of songs. These proceedings set rates for the next five year period and are numbered to tell them apart. The last proceeding, for example, was styled “Phonorecords IV” or sometimes “CRB 4” for those who struggle with long words. (Using the “CRB” acronym instead of “Phonorecords” is actually misleading because the CRB sets a number of rates.)

The proceedings will likely be divided in two: One proceeding for songs exploited in physical records like vinyl, CDs and permanent downloads and one proceeding for streaming mechanicals. These hearings are simultaneous and not sequential, so each hearing will be conducted side by side.

One reason for these simultaneous hearings is that the participants in each of the proceedings differ–the physical/download participants are songwriters and publishers on one side and the record companies on the other. The streaming participants are (often) the same songwriters and publishers on one side, but the streaming services are on the other.

The participants are incented to reach a voluntary settlement that they then present to the Copyright Royalty Judges for approval. The settlement negotiations are largely conducted in secret and no one on the songwriter side except a couple of participants knows anything about the terms of the settlement until it is presented to the Judges and the Judges make it public.

At this point, the Judges are required to entertain comments from the public as to whether the public supports the settlement (as required under a federal law applicable to all of the administrative state agencies from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Social Security Administration to the Copyright Royalty Board).

No matter how much some of the publishers would like to spin it, it is this public comment step where it all began to fall apart during the last proceeding styled “Phonorecords IV”, particularly over the “frozen mechanicals” issue. Signally, this disintegration of the initial physical/downloads “settlement” attracted a prairie fire of public comments that rejected the authority of the NMPA and NSAI to speak on behalf of all songwriters and publishers and also rejected the side deal that these groups had negotiated with the labels. The Judges listened, and the Judges rejected that settlement–I believe for the first time in the history of the rate setting proceedings.

The same was not true of the streaming mechanicals piece, however. I never did read a well-reasoned explanation for why participants lacked authority to speak on behalf of all songwriters, i.e., beyond their own members, in the frozen mechanicals proceeding, but that authority could not be questioned in the streaming proceeding. It should have been apparent to anyone paying attention that any consensus behind the time-encrusted “Big Pool” royalty calculation method for streaming mechanicals was rapidly crumbling apart. The Judges’ “39 Steps” royalty calculation is as mysterious as a Hitchcock movie and many did not trust it. And more importantly for our discussion today–still do not trust it at all.

As we approach Phonorecords V, there are some fundamental questions that all involved need to be asking themselves. The first is whether we want to go back to the same tired process of secret meetings with the big reveal resulting in public hostilities in the comments–against what is ostensibly our side. This before we even get to the negotiation with the other side.

The powers that be had the chance over the last few years to bring in some different viewpoints. Had they done so, they would have both diffused the inevitable collision, but could also have gotten the benefit of those viewpoints when there was still time to build alliances. There’s an idea–an integrative negotiation with a collaborative outcome.

Another fundamental question is whether we can reach a fairly quick deal with the labels on the physical/download side so that all concerned can turn their attention to bringing the streaming rates into some semblance of reality. Because the songwriters did such a persuasive job of raising the frozen mechanicals rates from 9.1¢ to 12¢ plus a COLA, that minimum statutory rate has now increased to 12.7¢. Given current inflation projections, it’s likely that the statutory rate will increase to about 13¢ and change by the end of 2026.

If a settlement could be reached quickly, it would not surprise me if someone came up with the idea of simply taking the then-extant minimum rate (for 2027) as the new base rate for the first year of Phonorecords V (2028) plus extending the annual COLA to protect songwriters in the out-years of PR V. Wherever the actual penny rates end up, if the songwriters and labels could reach an agreement quickly, it would save a bunch of effort and allow everyone to turn their attention to the streaming rates.

I wonder if it’s even possible to reach a negotiated settlement with the streaming services on the streaming mechanical. The entire concept of the “Big Pool” royalty rate is failing for streaming on both the sound recording and the song side of the deals. It was, frankly, a silly idea to begin with–and that takes us back to the beginning of streaming when deals were poorly negotiated with little to no accountability because physical still paid the bills. The general idea was that “superfans” would rule according to Thomas Hesse in Billboard who was around at the time: “If you get to superfans, who listen to music all the time, you get to all the money — not just from those people, but you get all the money from everybody.” The reality is that you can replace “superfans” with “superstars” or more simply, “market share”, and you would have a much better understanding of the “Big Pool” concept. The Big Pool is actually just a hyper efficient marketshare distribution of a pool of money.

What Spotify has demonstrated with their short sighted move on bundling is simply all the reasons why they are disliked and untrustworthy. They said the quiet part out loud–we have no idea what we are doing in this business but we–and not songwriters or musicians–are getting stupid rich at it. It is unlikely that anyone is going to welcome more of the same in Phonorecords V.

What is becoming apparent to an increasing number of songwriters is that there is one metric that matters to Spotify’s CEO–stock market valuation. That is what has made him a billionaire. That is what has made plenty of people at Spotify into millionaires. That is also the one metric that songwriters and artists have never participated in. Our negotiators have had their eye on the wrong ball.

I say if we’re going to spend millions on the government’s rate proceedings anyway, let’s get something for it for a change, shall we?

C Castle 2/15/25 C Castle 2/15/25

Artist Rights Institute Joins with Digital Creators Coalition on Special 301 Submission to US Trade Representative

We were pleased to join in with the Digital Creators Coalition on a public submission to the US Trade Representative’s Special 301 Report for 2025. The USTR Special 301 Report is an annual review by the United States Trade Representative assessing global intellectual property rights protection and enforcement. It identifies countries with inadequate IP laws, highlights issues like copyright piracy and trade secret theft, and aims to improve IP environments for U.S. rights holders. The report also highlights concerns about the protection of AI-related intellectual property and the enforcement of IP rights on AI platforms.

Crucially, the DCC submission addresses problematic “TDM exceptions” and the harms to creators they cause:

TDM Exceptions Threaten Creators’ Contributions to US National Economic Security
The United States must continue this trajectory of promoting respect for copyright and protection the US creative sector. We strongly oppose broad copyright exceptions for AI, including with respect to TDM, and reaffirm our position that its proponents have failed to demonstrate the need for such an exception. However, some countries are actively considering, or have already adopted, TDM exceptions that fundamentally weaken copyright protection in favor of promoting AI at the expense of the American creative sector.
These negative impacts of TDM exceptions would result from the use of creative content without authorization and without compensation, which are core components of copyright protection, and essential for further creation and dissemination of creative works. Moreover, where AI developers fail to maintain adequate records and provide recordkeeping and transparency regarding what content they use to train their AI models, rightsholders face enormous hurdles in enforcing their property rights, including in court. Left unchecked, these and other related harms threaten the sustainability and competitiveness of America’s creative sector and its ability to contribute to US economic growth and job creation.
Unfortunately, countries such as Japan and Singapore have already implemented broad TDM exceptions that weaken copyright protections in favor of allowing companies to train their AI models on copyrighted material without a license. China as well as other markets such as Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Hong Kong, Indonesia and the United Kingdom are all considering proposed copyright exceptions for TDM. Such measures often also lack recordkeeping and transparency obligations on AI developers regarding the creative content used in AI model training. These exceptions will undermine US property rights and cause irreparable harm to the creative sector by undermining the ability of US creators to create and disseminate new works, thereby impeding the creative sector’s significant and sustained contributions to US national economic security. Such measures also facilitate the offshoring of the US AI sector and expose vast amounts of data to foreign control.
The borderless nature of digital exploitation means that negative impacts of one nation’s TDM exception would be global as AI models trained in one country on creative content without consent from, or compensation to, rights holders would be exploited around the world. Such global copyright arbitrage would deny the creative community the opportunity to license their content for training and would contravene international copyright treaties, including the three-step test contained in the Berne Convention, TRIPS Agreement, WIPO Internet Treaties, and other international agreements.
In this context, we stress that so called “opt-out” provisions for rightsholders to reserve their rights are wholly inadequate to remedy the critical flaws inherent in TDM exceptions for a variety of practical reasons.9 Such schemes would create a fundamentally asymmetrical obligation, imposing the onus entirely on copyright holders and forcing them to rely on unproven means and nonexistent jurisprudence that will create legal uncertainty, chill licensing negotiations, and make enforcement highly challenging.

The submission goes on to make recommendations on how to address TDM and opt out on a country-by-country basis.

You may read the whole submission here.

Download

C Castle 2/10/25 C Castle 2/10/25

Newsletter, February 10

Antitrust: Gail Slater Appointed to Antitrust Division

President Trump has made an appointment that has Big Tech panicked (Fox News/Rachel Bovard)

Trump taps Gail Slater to lead DOJ antitrust division (The Hill/Julia Shapero)

Performing Rights Organizations

U.S. Copyright Office: Issues Related to Performing Rights Organizations Comments due April 11.

Careful What You Wish For: Consent Decrees, Compulsory Licenses and the Right to Say No (Artist Rights Watch/Chris Castle)

Artificial Intelligence

The British Public Wants Stricter AI Rules Than Its Government Does (Time/Billy Perigo)

UK Government’s AI Legislation is Defeated in the House of Lords (MusicTechPolicy/Chris Castle)

Trump’s AI ambitions and China’s DeepSeek overshadow an AI summit in Paris (AP/Sylvie Corbet and Kelvin Chan)

Copyright

The Copyright War Was Never Just About Copyright (The Illusion of More/David Newhoff)

@MarshaBlackburn, @RepDarrellIssa, Colleagues Reintroduce American Music Fairness Act #AMFA Ensure Artist Pay For Radio Play #IRespectMusic (MusicTechPolicy/Editor Charlie)

Songwriters Who Unknowingly Signed Away Their Rights Finally Get a Real Second Chance: The Promise of Vetter v. Resnik (Variety/Tim Kappel and Loren Wells

Books

Chaos Under Heaven:Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the Twenty-First Century by Josh Rogan

War Without Rules: China’s Playbook for Global Domination by General Rob Spalding

C Castle 2/3/25 C Castle 2/3/25

Newsletter, February 3

Ticketing

After Bruno Mars Bot Scalping Debacle, Hawaii to Prohibit Ticket Resale above Face Price (MusicTechPolicy/Chris Castle)

Artificial Intelligence

Maybe Figure Out What Happened Before Overreacting to the DeepSeek Bombshell? (National Review/Andrew McCarthy)

Oh, I’m sorry, tech bros – did DeepSeek copy your work? I can hardly imagine your distress (The Guardian/Marina Hyde)

Is There an AI Bubble? And Will it Burst in 2025? (24/7 Wall Street/Joey Frenette)

DeepSeek: Good for Nvidia, Great for America (Gilder Report/George Gilder)

Copyright Office Report on AI and Authorship

Spotify Streaming Mechanicals

Your Morning Coffee Special Episode: Jay Gilbert Interviews Liz Pelly on her Spotify Expose

No one should be suprised Spotify beat the MLC (Hypebot/Chris Castle)

Judge throws out MLC’s audiobooks bundle lawsuit, says Spotify can keep cutting songwriter royalties through its “cynical trick” (Complete Music Update/Sam Taylor)

Books

The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914, by David McCullough

Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control, by Stuart J. Russell

C Castle 1/29/25 C Castle 1/29/25

UK Government’s AI Legislation is Defeated in the House of Lords

The new-ish UK government led by Labour Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer faced a defeat in the House of Lords regarding their AI bill. The defeat was specifically about measures to protect copyrighted material from being used to train AI models without permission or compensation. Members of the House of Lords (known as “Peers”) voted 145 to 126 in favor of amendments to the UK Government’s Data (Use and Access) Bill, proposed by film director Beeban Tania Kidron, the Baroness Kidron (a “cross bench peer”) which aim to safeguard the intellectual property of creatives. Lady Kidron said:

There is a role in our economy for AI… and there is an opportunity for growth in the combination of AI and creative industries, but this forced marriage on slave terms is not it.

So there’s that. We need a film director in the Senate, don’t you think? Yes, let’s have one of those, please.

Bill Dies With Amendments

The amendments proposed by Baroness Kidron received cross-party support (what would be called “bi-partisan” in the US, but the UK has more than two political parties represented in Parliament). The amendments include provisions to ensure, among other things, that AI companies comply with UK copyright law, disclose the names and owners of web crawlers doing their dastardly deeds in the dark of the recesses of the Internet, and allow copyright owners to know when and how their work is used. It might even protect users of Microsoft or Google products from having their drafts crawled and scraped for AI training.

This defeat highlights the growing concerns within Parliament about the unregulated use of copyrighted material by major tech firms. Starmer’s Data (Use and Access) Bill was proposed by the UK government to excuse the use of copyrighted material by AI models. However, thanks in part to Lady Kidron it faced significant opposition in the House of Lords, leading to its defeat.

Here’s a summary of why it failed:

Cross-Party Support for Amendments: The amendments proposed by Baroness Kidron received strong support from both Labour and Conservative peers. They argued that the bill needed stronger measures to protect the intellectual property of creatives.
Transparency and Redress: The amendments aimed to improve transparency by requiring AI companies to disclose the names and owners of web crawlers and allowing copyright owners to know when and how their work is used.
Government’s Preferred Option: The government suggested an “opt-out” system for text and data mining, which would allow AI developers to scrape copyrighted content unless rights holders actively opted out. This approach was heavily criticized as it would lead to widespread unauthorized use of intellectual property, or as we might say in Texas, that’s bullshit for starters.
Economic Impact: Supporters of the amendments argued that the bill, in its original form, would transfer wealth from individual creatives and small businesses to big tech companies, undermining the sustainability of the UK’s creative industries. Because just like Google’s products, it was a thinly disguised wealth transfer.

The defeat highlights the growing concerns within Parliament about the unregulated use of copyrighted material by major tech firms and the need for stronger protections for creatives. several prominent artists voiced their opposition to the UK government’s AI bill. Sir Elton John and Sir Paul McCartney were among the most prominent critics. They argued that the government’s proposed changes would allow AI companies to use copyrighted material without proper compensation, which could threaten the livelihoods of artists, especially emerging ones.

Elton John expressed concerns that the bill would enable big tech companies to “ride roughshod over traditional copyright laws,” potentially diluting and threatening young artists’ earnings. As a fellow former member of Long John Baldry’s back up band, I say well done, Reg. Paul McCartney echoed these sentiments, emphasizing that the new laws would allow AI to rip off creators and hinder younger artists who might not have the means to protect their work–and frankly, the older artists don’t either when going up against Google and Microsoft, with backing by Softbank and freaking countries.

Their opposition highlights the broader concerns within the creative community like Ivors Academy and ECSA about the potential impact of AI on artists’ rights and earnings.

Role of the House of Lords

The House of Lords is one of the two houses of the UK Parliament, the other being the House of Commons. It plays a crucial role in the legislative process and functions as a revising chamber. Here are some key aspects of the House of Lords:

Functions of the House of Lords

Scrutiny and Revision of Legislation:
- The House of Lords reviews and scrutinizes bills passed by the House of Commons.
- It can suggest amendments and revisions to bills, although it cannot ultimately block legislation.
Debate and Deliberation:
- The Lords engage in detailed debates on a wide range of issues, contributing their expertise and experience.
- These debates can influence public opinion and policy-making.
Committees:
- The House of Lords has several committees that investigate specific issues, scrutinize government policies, and produce detailed reports.
- Committees play a vital role in examining the impact of proposed legislation and holding the government to account.
Checks and Balances:
- The House of Lords acts as a check on the power of the House of Commons and the executive branch of the government.
- It ensures that legislation is thoroughly examined and that diverse perspectives are considered.

Composition of the House of Lords

Life Peers: Appointed by the King on the advice of the Prime Minister, these members serve for life but do not pass on their titles.
Bishops: A number of senior bishops from the Church of England have seats in the House of Lords.
Hereditary Peers: A limited number of hereditary peers remain, but most hereditary peerages no longer carry the right to sit in the House of Lords.
Law Lords: Senior judges who used to sit in the House of Lords as the highest court of appeal, a function now transferred to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.

Limitations

While the House of Lords can delay legislation and suggest amendments, it does not have the power to prevent the House of Commons from passing laws. Its role is more about providing expertise, revising, and advising rather than blocking legislation.

Now What?

Following the defeat in the House of Lords, the government’s Data (Use and Access) Bill will need to be reconsidered by the UK government. They will have to decide whether to accept the amendments proposed by the Lords or to push back and attempt to pass the bill in its original form.

It’s not entirely unusual for Labour peers to vote against a Labour government, especially on issues where they have strong differing opinions or concerns. The House of Lords operates with a degree of independence of the House of Commons, where I would say it would be highly unusual for the government to lose a vote on something as visible at the AI issue.

The AI bill would no doubt be a “triple whip vote”, a strict instruction issued by a political party to its members usually in the House of Commons (in this case the Labour Party), requiring them to attend a vote and vote according to the party’s official stance to support the Government. It’s the most serious form of voting instruction, indicating that the vote is crucial and that party discipline must be strictly enforced. Despite the sadomasochistic overtones of a “triple whip” familiar as caning to British public school boys, peers in the Lords often vote based on their own judgment and expertise rather than strict party lines. This can lead to situations where Labour peers might oppose government proposals if they believe it is in the best interest of the public or aligns with their principles. Imagine that!

So, while it’s not the norm, it’s also not entirely unexpected for Labour peers to vote against a Labour government when significant issues are at stake like, oh say the destruction of the British creative industries.

Crucially, the government is currently consulting on the issue of text and data mining through the Intellectual Property Office. The IPO is accepting public comments on the AI proposals with a deadline of February 25, 2025. This feedback will likely influence their next steps. Did I say that the IPO is accepting public comments, even from Americans? Hint, hint. Read all about the IPO consultation here.

C Castle 1/27/25 C Castle 1/27/25

Newsletter, January 27

RIP Sam Moore

Artificial Intelligence Bubble

Why top tech analyst Gene Munster says investors have 2 years before the tech bubble bursts (Market Insider Jennifer Sor)

The AI bubble is looking worse than the dot-com bubble. Here’s why. (MorningstarJeffrey Funk and Gary Smith

Prediction: The Artificial Intelligence (AI) Bubble Will Burst in 2025. Here’s Why. (Motley Fool/Sean Williams)

AI-focused ETFs spread risk as fears grow of bubble (Financial Times/Chris Flood)

AI’s Trust Problem (Harvard Business Review/Bhaskar Chakravorti)

Artificial Intelligence: Train Brain Drain

The coin-operated policy laundry is back with the leader of the anti-artist pack: Lawrence Lessig on copyright, generative AI and the right to train (Walled Culture/Glyn Moody)
Writers! Do You Know your Drafts on MS Word are being Scooped by Microsoft to Build its AI Algorithm? But You Can Stop This From Happening (Read On). (Hugh Stephens Blog)

Artificial Intelligence: Godwin’s Law

Law Students: Do not EVER speak publicly of “firing” a client: ‘Neo-Nazi Madness’: Meta’s Top AI Lawyer [Mark Lemley] on Why He Fired the Company (Wired/Kate Knibbs)

Big Tech’s Misapprehensions About the AI Appropriation Invasion: Artist Rights are Not “Regulation” (MusicTechSolutions/Chris Castle) “Since the AI lawyers are fascinated by Nazi metaphors, let me give you one myself: Internet piracy is to Guernica what AI is to Warsaw.”

Copyright

Is the WEF’s Rights of Nature Campaign a Backdoor for Google to Sue Copyright Owners on AI? (MusicTechPolicy/Chris Castle)

Copyright, AI, and Great Power Competition (Foundation for American Innovation/Joshua Levine and Tim Hwang)

Creators react with fury, dismay and suspicion and want ‘uncertainty’ narrative to end (Charting GenAI/Graham Lovelace)

Books (Remember them?)
The Big Steal: Ideology, Interest, and the Undoing of Intellectual Property by Jonathan M. Barnett

The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else by Hernando de Soto