3 Count: Sony Musical

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1: Sony Music Takes USC to Court for $42 Million in Unlicensed Music Use

First off today, Benjamin Papp at NBC Los Angeles reports that Sony Music has filed a lawsuit against the University of Southern California (USC), alleging infringement of their music on various social media platforms.

According to the lawsuit, starting in 2021, the university allowed 170 unlicensed recordings in 283 social media videos across various USC-affiliated accounts. Sony says they repeatedly warned USC of the issue, but the school failed to change policies.

The lawsuit seeks $150,000 in damages for each copyright infringement, totaling over $42 million. USC said that it respects the intellectual property rights of others and will respond to the allegations in court.

2: Sony Says It Has Already Taken Down More Than 75,000 AI Deepfake Songs

Next up today, Thomas Maxwell at Gizmodo reports that Sony Music says it has identified and removed more than 75,000 deep fake songs from various online streaming platforms.

According to Sony, the fakes included duplicates of artists such as Harry Styles and Beyonce. The issue has been growing since 2023 when an AI-generated song featured fakes of Drake and The Weeknd.

Despite the removals, Sony predicts that this represents only a tiny fraction of musical fakes available, saying that artists need better protection from such fakes.

3: Meta Mocked for Raising “Bob Dylan Defense” of Torrenting in AI Copyright Fight

Finally, today, Ashley Belanger at Ars Technica reports that authors have filed a motion for summary judgment in their case against Meta, alleging that Meta’s piracy of terabytes of ebook data warrants a ruling in their favor.

Meta recently admitted using the Books3 dataset to train its various AI systems. Books3 is filled with pirated ebooks, paywalled articles and other copyright-infringing works. The authors allege this is a copyright infringement, even if it didn’t seed or distribute the set further.

Meta denies committing copyright infringement. However, the authors claim that the company is using the “Bob Dyland defense”, which comes from his song Sweetheart Like You. The song contains the lyrics, “Steal a little and they throw you in jail / Steal a lot and they make you king.”

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