3 Count: FIFTY FIFTY Pause

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1: Internet Archive Targets Book DRM Removal Tool With DMCA Takedown

First off today, Ernesto Van der Sar at Torrentfreak writes that the Internet Archive (IA) has filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notice with GitHub seeking removal of a tool that can strip Digital Rights Management (DRM) from books on its site.

The Internet Archive has along history of promoting the open access of books. Often earning the ire of publishers and authors. This came to a particular head in 2020 after the IA removed all lending restrictions on digital books as part of an “emergency library” for the pandemic. That open lending prompted publishers to sue the organization in a lawsuit that is still ongoing.

However, now the Internet Archive finds itself on the opposite side of that coin as it has filed the DMCA notice, hoping to get the DeGourou tool removed from the site. According to the notice, DeGourou allows the removal of copy protections the IA placed on books on its site, saying that it results in piracy of those books. GitHub has complied with the request, though the DeGourou has since moved to GitLab, a competing platform.

2: Associated Press Licensing News Archive to OpenAI

Next up today, Miranda Nazzaro at The Hill reports that the news syndicate the Associated Press (AP) announced that it has reached a deal with OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, to allow their archive of news stories to be used to train artificial intelligence systems.

In the joint statement, the companies announced that the AP’s archive will be licensed to OpenAI for use, while the AP has said they were receiving “technology and product expertise” from OpenAI in return.

The AP emphasized that it does not use AI in its reporting but said it “continues to look closely at standards around generative AI.” The licensing deal comes amidst controversy that OpenAI, and other companies, largely trained their systems on copyright-protected works of others without permission.

3: FIFTY FIFTY’s Song ‘Cupid’ Caught in Copyright Dispute, Royalties Withheld

Finally today, India Today reports that royalties for the song Cupid, performed by the South Korean band FIFTY FIFTY, are on hold pending a dispute over who holds the rights to the song.

The announcement came from the Korea Music Copyright Association (KOMCA), which approved a request by FIFTY FIFTY’s label, ATTRAKT, to put the royalties on hold. According to a separate lawsuit filed by ATTRAKT, producer Ahn Sung-il, through his label The Givers, attempted to “extort” the rights to the song.

According to the lawsuit, Ahn Sung-Il manipulated and forged the signatures of the original producers of Cupid and used those signatures to reduce one member’s songwriting distribution from 6.5 percent to 0.5 percent and transferred other distributions to himself. That dispute is ongoing, though the KOMCA said that it is their policy to pause all royalty disbursements until such a dispute is concluded.

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