3 Count: No Snippets

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1: Studios’ Offer to Writers May Lead to AI-Created Scripts That Are Copyrightable

First off today, Winston Cho at The Hollywood Reporter Esquire reports that Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) has released its latest proposal for a deal with the Writers Guild of America (WGA) but made it clear that it intends to press on with the use of generate artificial intelligence systems.

The WGA has been on strike since early May, bringing film and television production to a halt. This happened after the AMPTP and the WGA failed to reach terms on a new deal. One of the key sticking points has been the use of AI as part of the production workflow.

In the latest proposal, the AMPTP doubled down on their intent to use AI systems, but claimed that it would not undercut human writers. The WGA, on the other hand, expressed concern about loopholes and gaps in that protection. According to the AMPTP, human involvement would have the added benefit of ensuring that AI-generated works qualify for copyright protection, something that generated works do not enjoy on their own according to recent court decision.

2: French Publishers Accuse Elon Musk of Trying to Dodge EU Copyright Rules

Next up today, Laura Kayali at Politico reports that French publishers are accusing Elon Musk of altering the way news articles are displayed on X (Twitter) in order to avoid paying for their work.

At issue is a new French law that requires sites like X to pay royalties when using snippets, headlines and other elements when displaying links of certain news sites. However, Musk recently altered the way such links are displayed on X, removing both the headline and the text snippet.

Musk claimed that the move was due to “aesthetics”, but publishers allege that the move has less to do with design and more to do with avoiding paying a licensing fee. This comes not long after a group of French publishers filed a lawsuit against X, alleging that they haven’t paid the owed royalties for their content.

3: Amazon Sues Online Stores Selling Pirated DVDs

Finally today, Ernesto Van der Sar at Torrentfreak writes that Amazon has filed a lawsuit against several websites that it alleges are selling fake DVDs of shows and movies that they hold the rights to.

According to the lawsuit, the sites involved sell DVDs of shows and films that are featured on their streaming platform. But, while the sites go to great lengths to make the DVDs look official, there are no official DVD releases of this content. As such, they believe that the DVDs are illicit in nature

Amazon claims to have made several test purchases to establish the infringing nature of the sites. They are seeking both unspecified damages and an injunction barring the sites from any further sales.

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