Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - November 4th, ’23

[JackSpratts]

Since 2002































November 4th, 2023




The Pirates are Back

A new study from the European Union’s Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) suggest that online piracy has increased for the first time in years. In fact, piracy rates have been falling for several years, so a reverse in that trend is significant.

What is online piracy?

At the most basic level, online piracy is copying or stealing digital content. This could be music, video, software, ebooks or any other kind of content that should be paid for.

In the early 2000s, tools like Napster and Limewire allowed people to download music and video files for free – depriving artists of their income. The emergence of streaming services like Netflix, Apple Music and Spotify make it easy to access unlimited content – and ensure that artists are paid for their creations.

What happened?

New subscription services make it easier for people to access whatever digital content they want, when they want it. And because these services are relatively affordable, more people are choosing to pay for content.

However, the EUIPO’s discovery that piracy has increased suggests that something has changed. According to their study, 48% of all piracy is caused by people illegally viewing TV content. 58% of pirates access illicit content via streaming sites while 32% download episodes from torrent-based file sharing services.

What is the problem?

There are two main problems with digital piracy. First, it robs the creator of their income. It’s not just big companies who suffer – the people working behind the scenes lose out too.

Second, piracy is illegal. Penalties for stealing digital content vary from country to country, but they can be quite harsh. In the UK, digital pirates face up to five years in prison and a £5000 GBP fine (~$6000).

Whatever the penalty, piracy is illegal and you could be prosecuted if convicted of accessing or stealing digital content.

What has changed?

The EUIPO speculates that financial pressures, like inflation, means that people have less money to spend on entertainment. This can be seen in the way that fewer people are signing up for Netflix or Amazon Prime – and some are even cancelling their subscriptions altogether.

The EUIPO suggests that rather than stop watching digital content online, these people are now turning to illegal sources to access the TV shows they watch. And that is why piracy rates are on the up.

Adding some perspective

It’s worth noting that although piracy is up, the rates are still far lower than they were 20, 10 or even five years ago. Whether people continue to access content illegally remains to be seen – hopefully this is just a ‘blip’ and rates of theft begin to fall again as the economy recovers.

If not, we can expect to see legal channels raising their prices again to cover the losses caused by piracy.
https://www.pandasecurity.com/en/med...e-piracy-back/





The Recap: Huge Cable TV Losses, Prime Video’s Ad-Free Tier Gets Priced, and More
Roger Cheng

It was another busy week of earnings, which meant a load of revelations from the various companies.

It was a bloodbath for the cable companies, while the wireless companies once again saw strong growth in 5G home internet. Amazon also finally shared how much you’ll have to pay to get rid of ads in its Prime Video service.

As always, there was a lot going on in the world of cord cutting. But that’s why The Recap exists, to catch you up on the biggest stories and why you should care about them.

Here’s what you need to know from this past week.

Cable TV Defections on the Rise

The top two cable companies posted their third quarter results, and they weren’t pretty from a TV subscriber front. Comcast lost over 490,000 TV customers in the period, and while the cable providers could rely on high-speed internet for growth, the company actually lost 18,000 broadband customers too.

Spectrum, meanwhile, lost 320,000 TV customers in the third quarter, but at least it added 63,000 internet customers.

An interesting consolation was the rise in mobile customers. Comcast added 294,000 wireless subscribers in the period, while Spectrum added 594,000 wireless subscribers.

5G Home Internet Also on the Rise

On the flip side, T-Mobile led all players on the broadband front by adding 557,000 5G home internet in the third quarter. Verizon added 384,000 5G home internet customers. This comes on top of the 25,000 customers AT&T reported adding last week, as it just expanded its service back in August.

While T-Mobile had a strong quarter from a wireless front, Verizon added 100,000 postpaid phone subscribers, a massive improvement from the 8,000 it added in the second quarter, but still lagging behind its competitors – and the cable providers. Last week, AT&T said it added 468,000 postpaid phone subscribers in the same period.

Looking at the bigger picture, you saw the cable companies eat into the wireless business – with Verizon still the biggest loser, while the carriers ate into cable’s broadband business.

It’s a topsy-turvy world.

Amazon Prime Video’s New Fee

Amazon on Thursday dropped some surprise news during its own third-quarter earnings conference call: How much you’ll have to pay to get rid of commercials on Prime Video.

The company previously said it plans to introduce commercials into its Prime Video service starting next year – the first time its core service will get ads. Amazon CEO Andy Jassey said that the service would intentionally keep them limited so there will be fewer ads than on rival services and traditional TV, but it’ll still be a jarring experience for anyone used to watching The Boys or Jack Ryan without commercials.

Amazon is in an unusual situation since Prime Video was always included with a Prime subscription. It can’t introduce a cheaper ad-tier like Netflix or Disney+ because it was essentially free. So it’s making ads the default instead.

If you really don’t want the commercials, you can pay $2.99 a month to move to an ad-free tier.

The world of streaming continues to get more expensive.

Roku Channel’s New Lineup

The Roku Channel has become one of the most popular free ad-supported streaming services. This week, the service quietly added 15 new channels. The additions include channels dedicated to Universal Monsters, perfect for Halloween, Ebony TV by Lionsgate and two kids channels focused on Barney & Friends and Super Mario.

On the sports front, Roku added both Fox Sports and NBC Sports, which both offer a curated selection of sports programming.

In total, the service has more than 350 live TV channels and 80,000 free movies and shows.

DIRECTV Wants to Pull a Spectrum

Charter’s Spectrum may have set a precedent when it struck a deal with Disney to drop several cable channels and agreed to bundle Disney+ with its linear programming. DIRECTV Chief Content Officer Rob Thun sounded off on the deal while at the LA Sports Innovation Conference this week, and it sounds like it wants similar terms.

A key sticking point is making sure DIRECTV customers get free access to all of the DTC platforms, especially if the company is paying the programming fee to carry similar channels.

“We were out there three or four years ago fighting for the principle that our customers shouldn’t have to pay twice,” Thun said, according to a report from Sports Business Journal.

The next few years of negotiations between the video providers and the media companies should be extremely interesting.
https://cordcuttersnews.com/the-reca...iced-and-more/





DIRECTV & Spectrum May Have Just Killed 30 Cable TV Networks
Luke Bouma

When Charter Communications Spectrum struck a deal with Disney to end the 12-day cable blackout and bring back channels like ESPN and FX to the cable provider’s lineup, a few of Disney-owned networks were left out. Now, DIRECTV announced that they want to follow Spectrum’s lead and get networks to agree to remove some of their smaller networks.

Spectrum’s deal with Disney resulted in Baby TV, Disney Junior, Disney XD, Freeform, FXM, FXX, Nat Geo Wild and Nat Geo Mundo all being dropped from Spectrum’s TV packages. This move and future moves could result in 30 cable TV networks, according to a report from S&P Global Market Intelligence analyst Scott Robson.

“We were out there three or four years ago fighting for the principle that our customers shouldn’t have to pay twice,” Thun said, according to a report from Sports Business Journal. “They already have pay-TV subscriptions. They should get free access to all of the DTC platforms.”

“What’s going to happen in deals going forward, we’re going to have a better integration of different apps into our linear experience … and provide more value to customers that frankly we thought was part of the underlying licensing of channels to begin with,” DIRECTV Chief Content Officer Rob Thun said.

These two companies are the second and third largest pay TV providers in the United States. If they both drop the same networks, it could easily kill those networks.

According to Robson, the networks most at risk of shutting down are:

• BBC America, IFC, Sundance TV (AMC Networks)
• CNBC World, E!, Syfy, Universal Kids (Comcast Corp. NBCUniversal)
• Fox Sports 2 (Fox Corp.)
• BET Gospel, BET Her, BET Hip-Hop, BET James, BET Soul, CMT Music, LOGO, MTV Classic, MTV Live, MTV2, mtvu, Nick Jr. NickMusic, Nicktoons, POP, Smithsonian Channel, TeenNick, Tr3s (Paramount Global)
• Disney Jr., Disney XD, Freeform, FXM, FXX, Nat Geo Mundo, Nat Geo Wild (Walt Disney Co.)
• American Heroes Channel, Boomerang, Cooking Channel, Destination America, Science, TCM, truTV (Warner Bros. Discovery)

“Carriage deals forged in 2012 were focused on ‘TV Everywhere’ rights,” Robson wrote. “Nowadays, deals include negotiations for buy-through windows for streaming services like AMC+ and Discovery+.”

Disney and Spectrum’s heated dispute lasted for two sports-filled weekends and left 14.7 million Spectrum subscribers without viewing access at the start of college football season. A simular fight with DIRECTV could result in an additional 12.3 million customers losing access to these channels.

In total, if both services drop the same channels, that is 27 million fewer subscribers to these networks. A blow that many smaller channels could not survive.

Spectrum argued that the cost of content needed to be redefined and called the video ecosystem “broken.” The key sticking points in the argument was ESPN and Disney’s insistence on including it in more cable packages than Spectrum wanted. As the war between the two companies heated up, Charter CEO Chris Winfrey said he was willing to walk away from Disney, which would have been devastating to the media company and its ESPN asset. When talks between the two companies broke down, channels like ESPN, FX, The Disney Channel and multiple college sports networks went dark for the cable provider.

The question now seems to be is when will DIRECTV’s next big contract with companies like Disney come up for renewal.
https://cordcuttersnews.com/directv-...e-tv-networks/





Max’s Standard No-Ads Plan Is Dropping 4K Ultra HD Content, Reducing Concurrent Streams From Three to Two
Todd Spangler

Warner Bros. Discovery‘s tagline for Max is “The One to Watch.” But if you want to watch 4K Ultra HD movies or TV shows — or stream content on more than two devices at once — you’ll have to pay extra starting next month.

Max this week began notifying subscribers to its standard ad-free plan, priced at $15.99 per month (or $149.99 per year), that the service will no longer include 4K titles — with “full HD” at 1080p as the top resolution available — and that they will be able to stream on only two devices simultaneously (down from three before).

Going forward, 4K content will be available only in Max’s Ultimate Ad-Free plan, which costs $19.99 per month (or $199.99 per year) and provides the ability to watch up to four concurrent streams. WBD introduced the Ultimate tier this past May, touting the availability of more than 1,000 films and episodes in 4K UHD, an increase of nearly eightfold over what had been available previously on Max. The company also noted at the time that 4K content would eventually no longer be available on the standard tier.

Max’s Ultimate Ad-Free tier also supports Dolby Atmos content on compatible devices and allows up to 100 offline downloads (versus 30 for the standard plan).

“On your next billing date, on or after December 5, 2023, the price of your subscription will stay the same, but some of your plan features will change,” the message to Max subscribers says. “You can still stream all your favorite blockbuster movies, fresh originals and iconic series. Or even switch to the Ultimate Ad-Free plan to unlock more features.”

In announcing Max’s Ultimate tier earlier this year, Sudheer Sirivara, EVP of global technology platform at Warner Bros. Discovery, said, “We understand the value of offering our users a cinematic playback experience and to that end, we’ve implemented more advanced technology workflows that allow us to release more 4K content in a faster, more efficient way.”
https://variety.com/2023/digital/new...wo-1235778362/





YouTube is Getting Serious about Blocking ad Blockers

YouTube has confirmed that it has ‘launched a global effort’ to crack down on ad blockers.
Emma Roth

YouTube is broadening its efforts to crack down on ad blockers. The platform has “launched a global effort” to encourage users to allow ads or try YouTube Premium, YouTube communications manager Christopher Lawton says in a statement provided to The Verge.

If you run into YouTube’s block, you may see a notice that says “video playback is blocked unless YouTube is allowlisted or the ad blocker is disabled.” It also includes a prompt to allow ads or try YouTube Premium. You may get prompts about YouTube’s stance on ad blockers but still be able to watch a video, though, for one Verge staffer, YouTube now fully blocks them nearly every time.

YouTube confirmed that it was disabling videos for users with ad blockers in June, but Lawton described it as only a “small experiment globally” at the time. Now, YouTube has expanded this effort. Over the past several weeks, more users with ad blockers installed have found themselves unable to watch YouTube videos, with a post from Android Authority highlighting the increase in reports.

Lawton maintains that the “use of ad blockers” violates the platform’s terms of service, adding that “ads support a diverse ecosystem of creators globally and allow billions to access their favorite content on YouTube.”

YouTube has made several changes to the way ads operate on its platform this year. The company introduced unskippable 30-second ads to its TV app in May and later began experimenting with longer but less frequent ad breaks on TV, too. YouTube is likely hoping that its lengthy ad breaks drive more users to sign up for its ad-free YouTube Premium subscription, but a $2 price hike and the discontinuation of its cheaper Premium Lite plan might make the option less attractive.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/31/...own-broadening





YouTube's Plan Backfires, People are Installing Better Ad Blockers

People are scrambling to find a better ad blocking alternative.
Ryan McNeal

• YouTube’s crackdown on ad blockers is causing users to uninstall the software in record numbers.
• However, an even higher number of users are instead turning to better ad blockers that won’t trigger YouTube’s warning.
• Some users are even going as far as to switch to a new browser.

YouTube recently expanded its ad-blocking efforts, transitioning from just a small experiment to a global launch. The move appears to have had some success, as users are uninstalling the software in record numbers. But you can also argue it has had the opposite effect, as even higher numbers of users are turning to better ad blockers.

Hundreds of thousands of users have uninstalled ad blockers in October, seemingly in connection with YouTube’s broadened crackdown, according to a report from Wired. At the same time, data shows that record-breaking numbers of people are also installing alternatives that won’t be caught in YouTube’s net.

Krzysztof Modras of Ghostery — one of the more popular ad blockers in Chrome’s extension store — says they have seen three to five times the amount of installs and uninstalls over the last month. Over 90% of those users who uninstalled the extension cited the software failing on YouTube as the reason for their decision. However, the company saw a 30% uptick in installations on Microsoft Edge, with users attempting to find a suitable alternative.

Another blocker, AdGuard, told the outlet they normally see about 6,000 uninstallations per day on Chrome, but that shot up to 11,000 per day between October 9 and the end of the month, peaking at 52,000 on October 18. However, the paid version of the extension appears to be immune to YouTube’s ban. It’s reported that the company says when people realized this, user counts increased, reaching up to 60,000 installations on October 18 and October 27.

Right now, it appears YouTube’s crackdown on ad blockers has people scrambling to find a better alternative. Some people are even turning to solutions like Newpipe, a YouTube-like website that’s capable of running videos from the platform without ads.

Experts from the industry, like Modras, are warning that YouTube’s efforts to stop ad blockers could result in more complex blocking tactics. These more complex tactics could lead to the creation of unintentional security holes.

If you’re looking alternatives, extensions like uBlock Origin still work when used on Firefox. Adblock Plus has also offered some suggestions on how to get past the anti-ad block wall. There’s also the option of biting the bullet and paying for YouTube Premium.
https://www.androidauthority.com/you...talls-3382289/





The AV1 Video Codec Gains Broader Hardware Support

AV1 is the next-gen open-source royalty-free video codec created by the Alliance for Open Media (AOM), a group founded by Google, Mozilla, Cisco, Microsoft, Netflix, Amazon, and Intel. Apple is also a member.

We are finally seeing more hardware support for this codec. The new M3 chips from Apple support AV1 decode. The iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max also feature an AV1 hardware decoder.

The official Android 14 Compatibility Definition makes support for AV1 mandatory. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, widely used by Android phones released in 2023, supports AV1.

With the exception of Microsoft Edge, all browsers support AV1.
https://fullystacked.net/posts/av1/





Nokia Sues Amazon From US to India Over Streaming-Tech Patents

• Cases filed in US, Germany, India, the UK, and EU Patent Court
• Nokia said it also started litigation against HP in the US

Karin Matussek

Nokia Oyj sued Amazon.com Inc. in courts across three continents, alleging the e-commerce giant uses its technologies in streaming services and devices without authorization.

The suits were filed in the US, Germany, India, the UK, and the European Unified Patent Court, Arvin Patel, Nokia’s Chief Licensing Officer said in a statement on the company’s website. Separately, a suit was also filed against HP Inc. in the US over video-related technologies, he said.

“We’ve been in discussions with each of Amazon and HP for a number of years, but sometimes litigation is the only way to respond to companies who choose not to play by the rules followed and respected by others,” said Patel.

Companies providing video streaming services or streaming devices enjoy “huge benefits” from Nokia’s research which in turn needs to be compensated accordingly, Patel said.

Amazon and HP didn’t immediately reply to emails seeking comment.

Nokia said litigation is never its first choice and that the vast majority of its patent licensing agreements are agreed amicably. But regulators such as the European Commission have made efforts in recent years to cut down on the number of disputes over technology such as mobile telephony that end up in court — arguing that protracted disputes can stymie innovation.

In June, Nokia announced a license agreement with Apple Inc., without disclosing the terms.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...g-tech-patents





In Hollywood Writers’ Battle Against AI, Humans Win (for now)
Jake Coyle

After a 148-day strike, Hollywood screenwriters secured significant guardrails against the use of artificial intelligence in one of the first major labor battles over generative AI in the workplace.

During the nearly five-month walkout, no issue resonated more than the use of AI in script writing. What was once a seemingly lesser demand of the Writers Guild of America became an existential rallying cry.

The strike was also about streaming-era economics, writers room minimums and residuals — not exactly compelling picket-sign fodder. But the threat of AI vividly cast the writers’ plight as a human-versus-machine clash, with widespread implications for other industries facing a radically new kind of automation.

In the coming weeks, WGA members will vote on whether to ratify a tentative agreement, which requires studios and production companies to disclose to writers if any material given to them has been generated by AI partially or in full. AI cannot be a credited writer. AI cannot write or rewrite “literary material.” AI-generated writing cannot be source material.

“AI-generated material can’t be used to undermine a writer’s credit or separated rights,” the proposed contract reads.

Many experts see the screenwriters’ deal as a forerunner for labor battles to come.

“I hope it will be a model for a lot of other content-creation industries,” said Tom Davenport, a professor of information technology at Babson College and author of “ All-in on AI: How Smart Companies Win Big with Artificial Intelligence.” “It pretty much insures that if you’re going to use AI, it’s going to be humans working alongside AI. That, to me, has always been the best way to use any form of AI.”

The tentative agreement between the Writers Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which negotiates on behalf of the studios, doesn’t prohibit all uses of artificial intelligence. Both sides have acknowledged it can be a worthwhile tool in many aspects of filmmaking, including script writing.

The deal states that writers can use AI if the company consents. But a company cannot require a writer to use AI software.

Language over AI became a sticking point in the writers’ negotiations, which dragged on last week in part due to the challenges of bargaining on such a fast-evolving technology.

When the writers strike began on May 2, it was just five months after OpenAI released ChatGPT, the AI chatbot that can write essays, have sophisticated conversations and craft stories from a handful of prompts. Studios said it was it too early to tackle AI in these negotiations and preferred to wait until 2026.

Ultimately, they hashed out terms while noting that the outlook is certain to change. Under the draft contract, “the parties acknowledge that the legal landscape around the use of (generative AI) is uncertain and rapidly developing.” The companies and the guild agreed to meet at least twice a year during the contract’s three-year term.

At the same time, there are no prohibitions on studios using scripts they own to train AI systems. The WGA left those issues up to the legal system to parse. A clause notes that writers retain the right to assert that their work has been exploited in training AI software.

That’s been an increasingly prominent concern in the literary world. Last week, 17 authors, including John Grisham, Jonathan Franzen and George R.R. Martin, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI alleging the “systematic theft on a massive scale” of their copyrighted books.

The terms the WGA achieved will surely be closely watched by others — particularly the striking members of the actors union, SAG-AFTRA.

“This is the first step on a long process of negotiating and working through what generative AI means for the creative industry — not just writers but visual artists, actors, you name it,” says David Gunkel, a professor of media studies at Northern Illinois University and author of “Person, Thing, Robot.”

Actors, on strike since July 14, are likewise seeking better compensation from streaming. But they are also demanding safeguards against AI, which can potentially use a star’s likeness without his or her permission or replace background actors entirely.

Attempts to adopt AI “as a normal operating procedure” are “literally dehumanizing the workforce,” actor Bryan Cranston said recently on a picket line. “It’s not good for society. It’s not good for our environment. It’s not good for working-class families.”

In other developments, SAG-AFTRA members voted overwhelmingly Monday in favor of a strike authorization against video game companies. The use of AI in gaming is a particularly acute anxiety for voice-over actors.

Some skeptics doubt whether the writers made significant headway on AI. Media mogul Barry Diller, chairman of the digital media company IAC, believes not enough was done.

“They spent months trying to craft words to protect writers from AI, and they ended up with a paragraph that protected nothing from no one,” Diller told CNBC.

Robert D. Atkinson, president of the tech policy think tank Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, said limiting AI is unproductive.

“If we ban the use of tools to make organizations more productive, we are consigning ourselves to stagnation,” Atkinson write on X, formerly known as Twitter.

What most observers agree on, though, is that this was just the first of many AI labor disputes. Gunkel expects to see both writers and studios continue to experiment with AI.

“We’re so early into this that no one is able to anticipate everything that might come up with generative AI in the creative industries,” Gunkel said. “We’re going to see the need again and again to revisit a lot of these questions.”
https://apnews.com/article/hollywood...10c9c30a45ffc8





Judge Pares Down Artists' AI Copyright Lawsuit Against Midjourney, Stability AI
Blake Brittain

• Judge dismisses claims over AI output, publicity rights
• Key claim over use of artists' images in Stability AI training continues

A judge in California federal court on Monday trimmed a lawsuit by visual artists who accuse Stability AI, Midjourney and DeviantArt of misusing their copyrighted work in connection with the companies' generative artificial intelligence systems.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick dismissed some claims from the proposed class action brought by Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan and Karla Ortiz, including all of the allegations against Midjourney and DeviantArt. The judge said the artists could file an amended complaint against the two companies, whose systems utilize Stability's Stable Diffusion text-to-image technology.

Orrick also dismissed McKernan and Ortiz's copyright infringement claims entirely. The judge allowed Andersen to continue pursuing her key claim that Stability's alleged use of her work to train Stable Diffusion infringed her copyrights.

The same allegation is at the heart of other lawsuits brought by artists, authors and other copyright owners against generative AI companies.

"Even Stability recognizes that determination of the truth of these allegations – whether copying in violation of the Copyright Act occurred in the context of training Stable Diffusion or occurs when Stable Diffusion is run – cannot be resolved at this juncture," Orrick said.

The artists' attorneys Joseph Saveri and Matthew Butterick said in a statement that their "core claim" survived, and that they were confident that they could address the court's concerns about their other claims in an amended complaint to be filed next month.

A spokesperson for Stability declined to comment on the decision. Representatives for Midjourney and DeviantArt did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The artists said in their January complaint that Stability used billions of images "scraped" from the internet, including theirs, without permission to teach Stable Diffusion to create its own images.

Orrick agreed with all three companies that the images the systems actually created likely did not infringe the artists' copyrights. He allowed the claims to be amended but said he was "not convinced" that allegations based on the systems' output could survive without showing that the images were substantially similar to the artists' work.

The judge also dismissed other claims from the artists, including that the companies violated their publicity rights and competed with them unfairly, with permission to refile.

Orrick dismissed McKernan and Ortiz's copyright claims because they had not registered their images with the U.S. Copyright Office, a requirement for bringing a copyright lawsuit.

The case is Andersen v. Stability AI Ltd, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 3:23-cv-00201.

For the artists: Joseph Saveri of Joseph Saveri Law Firm; and Matthew Butterick

For Stability: Paul Schoenhard of Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson

For Midjourney: Angela Dunning of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton

For DeviantArt: Andy Gass of Latham & Watkins

Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litiga...ai-2023-10-30/





Artists Lose First Round of Copyright Infringement Case Against AI Art Generators

While a federal judge advanced an infringement claim against Stability AI, he dismissed the rest of the lawsuit.
Winston Cho

Artists suing generative artificial intelligence art generators have hit a stumbling block in a first-of-its-kind lawsuit over the uncompensated and unauthorized use of billions of images downloaded from the internet to train AI systems, with a federal judge’s dismissal of most claims.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick on Monday found that copyright infringement claims cannot move forward against Midjourney and DeviantArt, concluding the accusations are “defective in numerous respects.” Among the issues are whether the AI systems they run on actually contain copies of copyrighted images that were used to create infringing works and if the artists can substantiate infringement in the absence of identical material created by the AI tools. Claims against the companies for infringement, right of publicity, unfair competition and breach of contract were dismissed, though they will likely be reasserted.

Notably, a claim for direct infringement against Stability AI was allowed to proceed based on allegations the company used copyrighted images without permission to create Stable Diffusion. Stability has denied the contention that it stored and incorporated those images into its AI system. It maintains that training its model does not include wholesale copying of works but rather involves development of parameters — like lines, colors, shades and other attributes associated with subjects and concepts — from those works that collectively define what things look like. The issue, which may decide the case, remains contested.

The litigation revolves around Stability’s Stable Diffusion, which is incorporated into the company’s AI image generator DreamStudio. In this case, the artists will have to establish that their works were used to train AI system. It’s alleged that DeviantArt’s DreamUp and Midjourney are powered by Stable Diffusion. A major hurdle artists face is that training datasets are largely a black box.

In his dismissal of infringement claims, Orrick wrote that plaintiffs’ theory is “unclear” as to whether there are copies of training images stored in Stable Diffusion that are utilized by DeviantArt and Midjourney. He pointed to the defense’s arguments that it’s impossible for billions of images “to be compressed into an active program,” like Stable Diffusion.

“Plaintiffs will be required to amend to clarify their theory with respect to compressed copies of Training Images and to state facts in support of how Stable Diffusion – a program that is open source, at least in part – operates with respect to the Training Images,” stated the ruling.

Orrick questioned whether Midjourney and DeviantArt, which offers use of Stable Diffusion through their own apps and websites, can be liable for direct infringement if the AI system “contains only algorithms and instructions that can be applied to the creation of images that include only a few elements of a copyrighted” work.

The judge stressed the absence of allegations of the companies playing an affirmative role in the alleged infringement. “Plaintiffs need to clarify their theory against Midjourney — is it based on Midjourney’s use of Stable Diffusion, on Midjourney’s own independent use of Training Images to train the Midjourney product, or both?” Orrick wrote.

According to the order, the artists will also likely have to show proof of infringing works produced by AI tools that are identical to their copyrighted material. This potentially presents a major issue because they have conceded that “none of the Stable Diffusion output images provided in response to a particular Text Prompt is likely to be a close match for any specific image in the training data.”

“I am not convinced that copyright claims based a derivative theory can survive absent ‘substantial similarity’ type allegations,” the ruling stated.

Though defendants made a “strong case” that claim should be dismissed without an opportunity to be reargued, Orrick noted artists’ contention that AI tools can create material that are similar enough to their work to be misconstrued as fakes.

Claims for vicarious infringement, violations of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act for removal of copyright management information, right of publicity, breach of contract and unfair competition were similarly dismissed.

“Plaintiffs have been given leave to amend to clarify their theory and add plausible facts regarding “compressed copies” in Stable Diffusion and how those copies are present (in a manner that violates the rights protected by the Copyright Act) in or invoked by the DreamStudio, DreamUp, and Midjourney products offered to third parties,” Orrick wrote. “That same clarity and plausible allegations must be offered to potentially hold Stability vicariously liable for the use of its product, DreamStudio, by third parties.”

Regarding the right of publicity claim, which takes issue with defendants profiting off of plaintiffs’ names by allowing users to request art in their style, the judge stressed that there’s not enough information supporting arguments that the companies used artists’ identities to advertise products.

Two of the three artists who filed the lawsuit have dropped their infringement claims because they didn’t register their work with the copyright office before suing. The copyright claims will be limited to artist Sarah Anderson’s works, which she has registered. As proof that Stable Diffusion was trained on her material, Anderson relied on the results of a search of her name on haveibeentrained.com, which allows artists to discover if their work has been used in AI model training and offers an opt-out to help prevent further unauthorized use.

“While defendants complain that Anderson’s reference to search results on the ‘haveibeentrained’ website is insufficient, as the output pages show many hundreds of works that are not identified by specific artists, defendants may test Anderson’s assertions in discovery,” the ruling stated.

Stability, DeviantArt and Midjourney didn’t respond to requests for comment.

On Monday, President Joe Biden issued an executive order to create some safeguards against AI. While it mostly focuses on reporting requirements over the national security risks some companies’ systems present, it also recommends the watermarking of photos, video and audio developed by AI tools to protect against deep fakes. Biden, at a signing of the order, stressed the technology’s potential to “smear reputations, spread fake news and commit fraud.”

“The inclusion of copyright and intellectual property protection in the AI Executive Order reflects the importance of the creative community and IP-powered industries to America’s economic and cultural leadership,” said the Human Artistry Campaign in a statement.

At a meeting in July, leading AI companies voluntarily agreed to guardrails to manage the risks posed by the emerging technology in a bid by the White House to get the industry to regulate itself in the absence of legislation instituting limits around the development of the new tools. Like the executive order issued by Biden, it was devoid of any kind of reporting regime or timeline that could legally bind the firms to their commitments.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/bu...rs-1235632929/





The UK’s AI Summit is Taking Place at Bletchley Park, the Wartime HOME of Codebreaking and Computing
Jill Lawless

The United Kingdom is hosting the AI Safety Summit, bringing politicians, computer scientists and tech executives to a site chosen for its symbolism: Bletchley Park, synonymous with codebreaking and the birth of computing.

During World War II, a group of mathematicians, cryptographers, crossword puzzlers, chess masters and other experts gathered at the Victorian country house 45 miles (72 kilometers) northwest of London to wage a secret war against Nazi Germany. Their goal: cracking Adolf Hitler’s supposedly unbreakable codes.

Bletchley Park’s most famous feat was outwitting Germany’s Enigma encryption machine, which produced a constantly changing cipher and was widely considered unbreakable. To crack it, mathematician Alan Turing — building on work done by Polish codebreakers — developed the “Turing bombe,” a forerunner of modern computers.

Deciphered Enigma messages revealed details of the movements of Germany’s U-boat fleets and provided crucial information for the North African desert campaign and the Allied invasion of France. Some historians say cracking the code helped shorten the war by up to two years.

Historian Chris Smith, author of “The Hidden History of Bletchley Park,” said it is impossible to prove the extent to which the work at Bletchley Park shortened the war, but it undoubtedly sped up the development of computing.

Bletchley Park’s wartime scientists developed Colossus, the first programmable digital computer, to crack the Lorenz cipher that Hitler used to communicate with his generals.

“They built, effectively, one of the early generations of computers from basically nothing,” Smith said, exhibiting a “technological optimism” that’s a striking feature of wartime Bletchley Park.

No wonder current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government finds it inspiring.

Smith, a lecturer in history at Coventry University, said a mythology has developed around Bletchley Park, as a playground for Turing and other eccentric scientists, that oversimplifies its true contribution.

“It fits into this idea that a group of boffins with a bit of wool and some yards of wire and some bits and bobs can win the war,” he said.

In fact, almost 10,000 people worked at Bletchley Park during the war, three-quarters of them women, overflowing from the mansion into newly built brick and concrete blocks and smaller wooden structures known as huts.

“The way to imagine Bletchley Park is a massive civil service bureaucracy,” Smith said. “It’s basically a factory. … Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It’s always going.”

When peace came, the codebreakers returned to civilian life, sworn to secrecy about their wartime work. It was not until the 1970s that the work at Bletchley Park became widely known in Britain.

The site opened as a museum in 1994, after local historians banded together to prevent it from being bulldozed to build a supermarket. It was restored to its 1940s appearance, complete with manual typewriters, rotary phones and enamel mugs — including one chained to a radiator in Hut 8, where Turing led the Enigma team.

After the war, Turing continued to work on computing and developed the “Turing test” to measure when artificial intelligence becomes indistinguishable from a human — a test some say modern-day AI has already passed.

In 1952 he was convicted of “gross indecency” over his relationship with another man, stripped of his security clearance and forced to take estrogen to neutralize his sex drive. He died at 41 in 1954 after eating an apple laced with cyanide.

Turing received a posthumous apology from the British government in 2009 and a royal pardon in 2013. The 2014 film “The Imitation Game,” starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing, cemented his national hero status.

Turing is commemorated by statues and plaques across the U.K. One of the most prestigious honors in computing, the $1 million Turing Prize, is named after him. His face even adorns the Bank of England’s 50-pound note.
https://apnews.com/article/bletchley...0977d3cf736b8f





Opinion

Finally, Some Rules for the Internet
By the Editorial Board

Net neutrality has become the Washington equivalent of a Hollywood franchise: As if the sequel to the sequel weren’t enough, another installment of the debate over rules for the internet’s roads arrived this month. This time, however, there’s a plot twist.

Net neutrality, short for network neutrality, comes down to three core rules — no blocking, no throttling and no paid prioritization. That means basically what it sounds like. Internet service providers such as Comcast and Verizon should treat all traffic the same. Yet, as simple as this principle sounds, the Federal Communications Commission has struggled for decades to put it into practice, amid a ferocious debate in which each side treats FCC regulation, or the lack thereof, as an existential threat.

As with practically everything in Washington, this debate has become partisan. The agency’s biggest obstacle is its limited authority to regulate unless broadband is considered a “common carrier” under the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The FCC under President Barack Obama moved to reclassify broadband so it could regulate broadband companies; the FCC under President Donald Trump reversed the change. Dismayed advocates warned the world that, without the protections in place, the internet would break.

You’ll never guess what happened next: nothing. Or, at least, almost nothing. The internet did not break, and internet service providers for the most part did not block and they did not throttle. All the same, today’s FCC, under Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, has just moved to re-reclassify broadband. The interesting part is that her strongest argument doesn’t have much to do with net neutrality, but with some of the other benefits the country could see from having a federal watchdog keeping an eye on the broadband business.

A formal federal prohibition on blocking and throttling is unlikely to have any major effect on the broadband industry in either direction; the net neutrality naysayers claiming that companies will stop investing in internet infrastructure if they are regulated are exaggerating just as much as the net neutrality boosters who foretold the web’s demise without strong net neutrality rules. Substantial consequences have only become less likely as high-speed bandwidth has become less limited.

What, exactly, net neutrality rules look like matters less than that there are meaningful rules for broadband more generally. Broadband is an essential service. The coronavirus pandemic proved that much by forcing students and workers to rely on their WiFi connections to learn and to earn a living — and, worse, by consigning those without reliable connections to camp out at public libraries or in parking lots to log on. Yet there isn’t a single government agency with sufficient authority to oversee this vital tool.

Asserting federal authority over broadband would empower regulation of any blocking, throttling or anti-competitive paid traffic prioritization that they might engage in. But it could also help ensure the safety and security of U.S. networks. The FCC has, on national security grounds, removed authorization for companies affiliated with adversary states, such as China’s Huawei, from participating in U.S. telecommunications markets. The agency can do this for phone carriers. But it can’t do it for broadband, because it isn’t allowed to.

Or consider public safety during a crisis. The FCC doesn’t have the ability to access the data it needs to know when and where there are broadband outages — much less the ability to do anything about those outages if they are identified. Similarly, it can’t impose requirements for network resiliency to help prevent those outages from occurring in the first place — during, say, a natural disaster or a cyberattack. The agency has ample power to police the types of services that are becoming less relevant in American life, such as landline telephones, and little power to police those that are becoming more important every day.

The Telecommunications Act’s complex, archaic classification scheme has never been well-suited to the modern internet. How could it be, when in 1996 the narrow swath of American society that could get online at all had to dial up? Ideally, Congress would write a new law for a new era. And, ideally, lawmakers would also consider other elements of the internet technology industry that define Americans’ online experience, including app stores, social media sites and more. In the less-than-ideal present, however, the FCC is the only body proposing any version of internet governance. It would be better than nothing.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...-internet-fcc/





Movie Producers Drop Copyright Lawsuit Against Texas ISP

On October 27, 2023, a collection of movie producers including Millennium Media, Voltage Pictures, and Screen Media Ventures dismissed their copyright infringement lawsuit against Astound Broadband regional provider Grande Communications. The producers had filed suit against Grande in 2021, alleging that Grande had not done enough to stop internet users from pirating the producers’ films. Grande denied the producers’ allegations and also contended that the producers’ claims were barred by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) safe harbor, because Grande implemented a company policy under which it terminated the internet access of customers accused of copyright infringement.

“This completely vindicates our DMCA program,” explained Astound’s General Counsel Jeff Kramp. “The plaintiffs had an opportunity to vet our program, and after doing so they decided the case was not worth pursuing. To be clear, we did not pay a cent to resolve this case because we believe strongly in the effectiveness of our DMCA policy,” Mr. Kramp added.

The case is After II Movie, LLC, et al. v. Grande Communications Networks, LLC, No. 1:21-v-709-RP, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. Grande is represented by Richard Brophy, Zachary Howenstine, Kyle Gottuso, and Mark Thomas of Armstrong Teasdale LLP, and Jacqueline Altman of Naman Howell Smith & Lee.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/ho...inst-Texas-ISP
















Until next week,

- js.



















Current Week In Review





Recent WiRs -

October 28th, October 21st, October 14th, October 7th

Jack Spratts' Week In Review is published every Friday. Submit letters, articles, press releases, comments, questions etc. in plain text English to jackspratts (at) lycos (dot) com. Submission deadlines are Thursdays @ 1400 UTC. Please include contact info. The right to publish all remarks is reserved.


"The First Amendment rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public." - Hugo Black