3 Count: Game of AI

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1: Top Authors Join Lawsuit Against OpenAI Over “Mass-Scale Copyright Infringement” of Novels

First off today, Winston Cho at The Hollywood Reporter Esquire reports that yet another group of authors has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI over allegations that the company violated their copyright when training their AI systems, including the popular ChatGPT.

This group includes prominent authors such as George R.R. Martin, Jonathan Franzen and John Grisham, who allege “mass-scale copyright infringement” in the ingesting and training of AI systems using their work. According to the authors, the datasets that OpenAI used included “shadow libraries” that include pirated copies of their books, all to create chatbots that can mimic human authors, including mirroring their writing style.

The lawsuit, which was filed in New York, is the third such lawsuit against OpenAI filed by authors. The first was a proposed class action filed by comedian Sarah Silverman, and the second was another proposed class action headed by author Paul Tremblay. This third lawsuit also seeks to be a class action, as well as an injunction against OpenAI and unspecified damages.

2: Uptobox Goes Dark Following Police Raids on French Datacenters (Updated)

Next up today, Andy Maxwell at Torrentfreak writes that police in France raided two datacenters as part of a civil action, shuttering the file sharing site Uptobox.

Uptobox was founded in 2011 and became well known as a place for hosting copyright infringing material, in particular in France. In May of this year, the site was blocked by French ISPs, though the site quickly began offering advice for circumventing the block rather than changing any of its policies.

Following the police raid yesterday, the site went down, with Uptobox taking to X (Twitter) to say that it was experiencing a technical issue. It says it has not received confirmation of the seizure, but notes that its servers are inaccessible. The move comes at the request of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, who represents a wide variety of entertainment companies.

3: High Costs Driving Sports Fans to Pirated Streaming, Study Reveals

Finally today, Matthew Keys at StreamTV Insider reports that a new study by betting encyclopedia Oddspedia and Richfield Research shows that, in the United States, nearly half of all football fans have used an illegal stream to watch the support.

According to those surveyed, the reasons they turned to piracy was a combination of rising costs of streaming services and fragmentation of NFL streaming rights. Currently, NFL games are streamed on several different platforms and services, often causing confusion on how to watch one’s favorite team.

Nonetheless, rightsholders are pushing for tough new anti-piracy regulations that they hope will better enable them to combat illegal streaming. They say the existing laws are ineffective when dealing with sports streaming, necessitating the changes.

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