3 Count: Don’t Ride It

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1: Open AI and Microsoft Move to Dismiss Newspaper Publishers’ Copyright Lawsuit

First off today, Nika Schoonover at Courthouse News Service reports that OpenAI and Microsoft have filed a motion to partially dismiss a lawsuit filed against them by a group of newspaper publishers.

MediaNews Group and Tribune Publishing filed the lawsuit. They allege that the two companies illegally used copyright-protected articles to train their AI systems and that, with the right prompt, such systems can reproduce the article nearly verbatim.

However, according to the motion to dismiss, they do not exploit protected expression from the publishers, and the plaintiffs have failed to state a claim that they contributed to “end-user copyright infringement” or otherwise encouraged or enabled such infringement. The publishers, however, claim that their papers make up at least 124 million pieces of text in the depository used to train OpenAI’s systems.

2: Indie Label 2Point9 Files Copyright Lawsuit Against Sony’s Ministry of Sound Recordings in The Uk Over DJ Regard’s ‘ride It’

Next up today, Daniel Tencer at Music Business Worldwide reports that the London-based independent label 2Point9 has filed a lawsuit in the UK against Ministry of Sound Recordings, alleging copyright infringement of a 2008 song.

The label alleges that DJ Regard’s 2019 hit Ride It infringes Jay Sean’s original version. They claim that the remix uses vocals from the original without a license and that the label was aware of the infringement before the song was released.

According to the lawsuit, Ministry of Sound Recordings has since updated the song with new, non-infringing vocals. However, the song received millions of streams on YouTube and Spotify before the vocals were changed. Ministry of Sound Recordings is owned by Sony Music Entertainment, which acquired it in 2016.

3: YouTube Looks to be Testing Server-Side Ad Injection to Counter Ad Blockers

Finally today, Abner Li at 9to5Google reports that YouTube has begun trialling server-side ad injections as a way to defeat ad blockers.

The announcement was originally made by the developer of SponsorBlock, a crowd-sourced browser extension for skipping sponsored segments. They claim that YouTube has begun inserting ads directly into the videos themselves, breaking the timestamps of Sponsorblock.

The move is the latest round in YouTube’s fight against ad blockers. Previously they have worked to limit ad blockers to a certain number of videos or make the site not function for them at all. Historically, YouTube has served ads on a separate server, making them easy to block. However, with the ads being injected into the video itself, that task will become much more difficult.

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