Blog
Newsletter, February 25
Artist Rights Institute’s Submission in IPO 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
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.
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)
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
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
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
Newsletter, January 20
Los Angeles Wildfires
Live Nation and Crew Nation Global Relief Fund Commit $1 Million to Support Los Angeles Music Community Impacted by Wildfires (Digital Music News/Ashley King)
LA Relief Concerts, Donations, Help For Musicians & More (Hypebot/Bruce Houghton) Updated regularly
TikTok Shutdown
Supreme Court Unanimous Ruling Upholding TikTok Ban (Per Curiam)
Bytedance owned/affiliated apps that have been/may be taken down depending on day of the week:
TikTok is SOPA Take 3: Big Tech’s Human Shield Strategy on Full Display (MusicTechPolicy/Chris Castle)
TikTok Stops Working as US Ban Comes into Force (BBC/Aoife Walsh)
TikTok is Offline in United States after Supreme Court Upholds Ban (NPR/Bobby Allyn)
“Terrifying”: Critics Blast TikTok for “Sucking Up to Trump” (Huffington Post/Ben Blanchet)
After A TikTok Ban, Could Gaming Overlord Tencent Be Targeted Next? (Forbes/Paul Tassi)
Artificial Intelligence
Exhibits show Meta employees apparently discussing removal of copyright management information from materials from some works in dataset(s) (ChatGPT Is Eating the World)
Open consultation, Copyright and Artificial Intelligence (UK Intellectual Property Office)
Recommendation urging UK copyright overhaul is ‘straight from tech playbook’ (Charting Gen AI/Graham Lovelace)
UK regulators could burst the Google bubble (UnHerd/Andrew Orlowski)
Copyright
Copyright in Congress: 2024 Year in Review (Copyright Alliance/Keith Kupferschmid
Newsletter, January 13
[Chris Castle says: If you have concerns about protecting your recordings, scores, tapes, hard drives, consider contacting Iron Mountain’s Media and Entertainment Services and see if they can help you.)
Los Angeles Wildfires
Los Angeles wildfire survivors can apply for federal aid today, new website launched to help Californians (Governor of California)
Social Media/Litigation
‘It’s About How Power Works’: Author Liz Pelly On Her New Spotify Book, ‘Mood Machine’ (Rolling Stone/Jonathan Bernstein)
Social Media Addiction Multidistrict Litigation–the Return of Joe Camel in the Sleeper Case That Could Break Silicon Valley (Music Technology Policy/Chris Castle)
Revisiting Litigation Alleging Google Discovery Violations (Ben Edelman)
TikTok at Supreme Court
TikTok v. Garland, SCOTUS Transcript
TikTok Final Appeal to Supreme Court Didn’t Go Well (New York Magazine/John Herrman)
Supreme Court seems likely to uphold a law that could ban TikTok in the U.S. on Jan. 19 (AP/Mark Sherman)
Ticketing
Avenged Sevenfold’s M. Shadows Unmasks Truth Behind ‘Dynamic’ Ticket Pricing: ‘Artists Love to Hide Behind Live Nation and Ticketmaster and Go, ‘Oh. We Had No Clue” (Ultimate Guitar/Staff)
AZ lawmaker calling out ticket scalpers, resellers for apparently flouting new state law (ABC15/Josh Kristianto)
Streaming
Apple Music Statistics By Demographics, Revenue, Users and Facts (Coolest Gadgets/Rohan Jambhale)
‘It’s About How Power Works’: Author Liz Pelly On Her New Spotify Book, ‘Mood Machine’ (Rolling Stone/Jonathan Bernstein)
Artificial Intelligence
AI Lawsuit Developments in 2024: A Year in Review (Copyright Alliance/Kevin Madigan)
4 in 10 companies planning job cuts due to AI: Survey (The Hill/Tara Super)
Meta Secretly Trained Its AI on a Notorious Piracy Database, Newly Unredacted Court Docs Reveal (Wired/Kate Knibbs)
Congressman Issa Introduces Landmark Legislation to Stop the Misuse of AI-Generated Digital Replicas (Press Release) Bill summary here.
Machine Failing: The Linkage Between Software Development And Military Accidents (War on the Rocks/Jeffrey Ding And Rick Landgraf)
Newsletter, January 6
Music Business
It’s Getting Harder to Deny that Payola 2.0 Is Alive and Well in The Music Streaming Era (Headphone Honesty/Andy G.)
Canadian Court Pauses So-Called ‘Streaming Tax’ on Companies Like Spotify, Amazon and Apple (Billboard/Richard Trapunski)
What the Algocrats Want You to Believe (MusicTech Solutions/Chris Castle)
Is Vivid Seats Selling? Ticketing Platform Reportedly Attracts Private Equity Takeover Interest Amid Continued Live-Sector Enthusiasm (Digital Music News/Dylan Smith)
No Bots, No Billionaires: StubHub’s Grotesque IPO Demonstrates Another Artist Ripoff By Our Tech Oligarchs (MusicTechPolicy/Chris Castle)
Jay Gilbert and Rob Abelow discuss music’s biggest problems (Your Morning Coffee Podcast)
Inside The Portfolio Of Businesses Owned By Downtown Music – The Company Universal Is Buying For $775m (Music Business Worldwide/Murray Stassen)
Artificial Intelligence
Beware the Intention Economy: Collection and Commodification of Intent via Large Language Models (Harvard Data Science Review/Yaqub Chaudhary and Jonnie Penn, Cambridge’s Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence) (Conversational AI agents may develop the ability to covertly influence our intentions, creating a new commercial frontier that researchers call the “intention economy”.)
Meta scrambles to delete its own AI accounts after backlash intensifies (CNN/Allison Morrow) (Reaction to Facebook AI created fake user profiles)
The Human Cost Of Our AI-Driven Future (Noema Magazine/Adio Dinika)
AI vs. Copyright: A Legal Showdown Shaking the Foundations (OpenTools/Mackenzie Ferguson)
AI Still Lacks Common Sense 70 Years Later (Marcus on AI/Gary Marcus & Ernest Davis)
Social Media
Mass tort litigation to watch in 2025 (Reuters/Brendon Pierson) Social media addiction multidistrict litigation against YouTube, Facebook, Google, TikTok, Snapchat.
Meta’s Zuckerberg not liable in lawsuits over social media harm to children (Reuters/Jonathan Stemple)
World News
Trudeau expected to announce exit as party leader before national caucus meeting Wednesday (subscription) (Globe and Mail/Robert Fife & Marieke Walsh)
Will Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau resign or prorogue parliament? What it means and how it impacts Canadians (Inside Halston/Staff Reporters)
Books (New or New to You)
Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist by Liz Pelly
Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge by Jean Noël Jeanneney