3 Count: Trimmed Down

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1: Judge Pares Down Artists’ AI Copyright Lawsuit Against Midjourney, Stability AI

First off today, Blake Brittain at Reuters reports that a judge has greatly trimmed down a lawsuit filed by artists against several AI companies, leaving only a single copyright claim behind.

A group of artists filed a lawsuit against Stability AI and two companies who use their Stable Diffusion text-to-image technology. They claimed that, in training their AI systems, they “scraped” billions of images to train their systems on. They alleged a mixture of copyright and publicity rights violations.

However, much of that lawsuit has been trimmed, with all of the publicity claims being dropped. Also, two of the artists had their copyright claims dropped due to a lack of copyright registration and two of the companies were dismissed since they didn’t train the AI systems, only used the output. Surviving the trimming was one artist whose copyright claim against Stability AI over the use of the images in training is being allowed to move forward. The plaintiffs have said that they will refile their other claims but add that the core of their case has moved forward.

2: Brazil Regulator Claims “80% of Pirate TV Boxes” Were Blocked Last Week

Next up today, Andy Maxwell at Torrentfreak writes that Brazil’s telecoms regulator, Anatel, claims that a recent sweep has blocked approximately 80% of the pirate “TV Boxes” in the country.

According to an announcement, the organization has shuttered over 3,000 servers since the beginning of the year, resulting in roughly 80% of the estimated seven million active boxes in the country losing their service.

This comes shortly after Anatel unveiled it’s new “Anti-Piracy Laboratory” in Brasilia. During that ceremony, they announced that they had conducted 29 operations and seized some 1.4 million in uncertified devices.

3: Pirating On The Rise For First Time In Years, Streaming Prices To Blame?

Finally today, Robert Scucci at Giant Freakin Robot writes that a new study by the European Union’s Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) says that piracy is again on the rise, even if it is nowhere near the levels of the early 2000s.

According to the study, 48 percent of all piracy is due to illegal TV viewing and that streaming piracy makes up 58 percent of the landscape, with download sites constituting another 32 percent.

However, it is the rate of piracy that has drawn the most attention. Piracy has been on a steady decline for decades but has increased for the first time in years. Many attribute this to the fragmentation of the streaming marketplace and increased costs of streaming services.

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