Copyright

These Hipgnosis guys really buying up songwriters’ catalogs:

https://variety.com/2020/biz/news/blink-182-tom-delonge-hipgnosis-1203459579/

https://variety.com/2019/biz/news/timbaland-hipgnosis-songs-1203372008/

But why? They want to hang up a lot of album covers in their office?

Hipgnosis cofounder Merck Mercuriadis said: “Ask any of today’s greatest creators who their biggest influences are and the one name that appears on everybody’s list is Timbaland. Blink 182's Tom DeLonge.”

Haha. Here’s a whole thing about it — publishing rights as evergreen commodity: https://variety.com/2019/music/opinion/master-rights-futures-greed-is-good-nick-jarjour-column-1203358588/

The Kraftwerk v Pelham lawsuit is back before the BUNDESGERICHTSHOF, but unexpectedly the 22-year case is set to go on for even longer – weeks or months, God. It's not like Germans to overcomplicate matters

Snapshot from yesterday:

https://cdn.prod.www.spiegel.de/images/d6f01afb-5bd4-418f-a873-c670070259fe_w948_r1.77_fpx87_fpy37.jpg

...It's cool that there are two girl Kraftwerks now, while Moses Pelham's lawyer is Andre Rieu for some reason.

Public Domain Day 2020: These 95-Year-Old Works Are Now Free to Use

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/akwd7b/best-of-public-domain-day-2020

This is rad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJtm0MoOgiU

https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/19/23689879/ai-drake-song-google-youtube-fair-use

If Google agrees with Universal that AI-generated music is an impermissible derivative work based on the unauthorized copying of training data, and that YouTube should pull down songs that labels flag for sounding like their artists, it undercuts its own fair use argument for Bard and every other generative AI product it makes — it undercuts the future of the company itself.

If Google disagrees with Universal and says AI-generated music should stay up because merely training an AI with existing works is fair use, it protects its own AI efforts and the future of the company, but probably triggers a bunch of future lawsuits from Universal and potentially other labels, and certainly risks losing access to Universal’s music on YouTube, which puts YouTube at risk.

Nilay doesn’t seem to understand the DMCA. YouTube’s not at a risk for being sued; the lawsuit would involve the claimant and the content uploader. The person he asked at Google clearly tried to explain this to him.