In a major loss for the nation’s music industry, the Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that a major internet service provider is not liable for copyright infringement because it failed to kick known copyright violators off its network.
  • Zikeji@programming.devEnglish
    87·
    13 days ago

    Good. This shit doesn’t make sense in the first place. Is the fucking highway liable when criminals use it to get to a victim?

  • Brkdncr@lemmy.world
    53·
    13 days ago

    It sounds like copyright holder reps were going after ISP’s because they had money and were a large target.

    Going after individual copyright violators will be difficult because there’s a lot more of them. It will also be difficult because copyright violators had no money.

    It’s almost like the industry needs to re-think how they make income if the music itself can be copied at effectively no cost.

    A lot of artists have figured this out already by touring a lot more and putting their music on Bandcamp for cheap distribution. Another option is getting paid for live performances. Sadly the music distribution gatekeepers might need to find new jobs since competing with Bandcamp while maintaining their lifestyle is going to be difficult.

    • P00ptart@lemmy.world
      17·
      12 days ago

      Bands themselves make very little off of sales. That mostly gets eaten up by managers, distributors, and labels. The bands make a lot more money from touring unless they own their own label.

  • Th4tGuyII@fedia.io
    40·
    13 days ago

    X argued that if content creators are permitted to sue AI platforms when people use their technology to violate copyright law, the tech companies would “have no choice but to constrain their actions” to avoid the potential liability.

    Would’ve been nice to have a win for the average person that didn’t also vicariously benefit AI companies, but that won’t be today.

    • thinkercharmercoderfarmer@slrpnk.net
      5·
      12 days ago

      Reading through the opinion, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this ruling come up in defense of chatbots trained on copyrighted works.

      A provider induces infringement if it actively encourages
infringement through specific acts. Grokster, 545 U. S., at
942 (Ginsburg, J., concurring). For example, in Grokster,
we held that a jury could find two file-sharing software com-
panies liable for inducement. Id., at 941 (majority opinion).
The companies promoted and marketed their software as a
tool to infringe copyrights. Id., at 926. The “principal ob-
ject” of their business models “was use of their software to
download copyrighted works.”

      “Sure, it can rip off copyrighted works, but your honor, we pinky promise that was never our principal object”. I could see it flying. Interestingly enough, the US Solicitor General explicitly brought up DMCA safe harbor in its amicus brief (siding with Cox):

      The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA),
Pub. L. No. 105-304, 112 Stat. 2860 (17 U.S.C. 512), gave
service providers, including ISPs, a safe-harbor defense
to claims of copyright infringement. That defense
shields ISPs from liability for copyright infringement
based on, among other things, “the provider’s transmit-
ting, routing, or providing connections for, material
through a system or network controlled or operated by
or for the service provider.” 17 U.S.C. 512(a). To qual-
ify for that safe harbor, the service provider must
“adopt[] and reasonably implement[] * * * a policy that
provides for the termination in appropriate circum-
stances of subscribers * * * who are repeat infringers.”

      I’d expect this admin to brief the court in a way that favors Musk et al, and it kind of makes sense that you’d want to bolster safe harbor protections, but I imagine a safe harbor defense of LLMs would require the reasonable policy of not training your LLM on a bunch of copyrighted works without their permission, with the express intent of creating derivative works on demand for your paying clients.

      Opinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-171_bq7d.pdf

      US SG amicus brief: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24-171/359730/20250527172556075_Cox-Sony.CVSG.pdf

  • Zetta@mander.xyz
    25·
    12 days ago

    This is like the only good news I’ve heard of the Supreme Court in a long time. I’m sure I’ve missed some other good news, but I tried to tune out of a lot of politics recently because it makes me want to kill myself.

    And before you give me shit for tuning out, I still vote, so fuck off.

  • baltakatei@sopuli.xyz
    23·
    12 days ago

    I have it in good authority that the bank robber filed the scene via the highway road system. Therefore, we are suing the road maintenance workers for failing to screen vehicles for bags full of stolen cash.