via Mike Shedlock:
Big tech vs big media will be a major theme in 2024.
Revenge of the Attorneys
Revenge of the attorneys in 2024 – a BIG (data) theme in the New Year.
Bankruptcy & Copyright practices will be BOOMING.
Expect this to be the first headline of too many to count: “New York Times Sues Microsoft, OpenAI for Copyright Breaches”@business
— Danielle DiMartino Booth (@DiMartinoBooth) December 27, 2023
Bankruptcy & Copyright practices will be booming says Danielle DiMartino Booth.
New York Times Alleges Copyright Infringement
The Wall Street Journal reports New York Times Sues Microsoft and OpenAI, Alleging Copyright Infringement
In a complaint filed Wednesday, the Times said the technology companies exploited its content without permission to create their AI products, including OpenAI’s humanlike chatbot ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot. The tools were trained on millions of pieces of Times content, the suit said, and draw on that material to serve up answers to users’ prompts.
In its complaint, the Times said it believes it is among the largest sources of proprietary information for OpenAI and Microsoft’s AI products. Their AI tools divert traffic that would otherwise go to the Times’ web properties, depriving the company of advertising, licensing and subscription revenue, the suit said.
The Times is seeking damages, in addition to asking the court to stop the tech companies from using its content and to destroy data sets that include the Times’ work.
Barry Diller, the chairman of IAC, which owns sites like Better Homes & Gardens, People and Verywell Health, has said he believes publishers’ copyrights are being violated.
Robert Thomson, chief executive of Wall Street Journal parent News Corp, has been vocal about his concerns about AI, including the potential for tools to use publishers’ content without permission.
What About Fair Use?
Fair use is a legal term that in some instances allows uses of copyright material. Fair Use is defined in Section 107 of the Copyright Act
The fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.
I benefit greatly from fair use. I comment on the news, sometimes agreeing and sometimes disagreeing with articles I refer to. This blog is neither agreement nor disagreement. It is a discussion of fair use and why that is at the heart of the matter.
A couple years ago, the Financial Times notified me that I could not use more than one sentence from any of their articles. I am sure a few paragraphs with attribution is fair use, but it certainly is not worth the cost to fight that battle. Instead I cancelled my subscription.
The better outlets offer free links where one can send an entire article. The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, the Washington Post , and the New York Times all do. And I subscribe to all of them.
Attribution
Unlike Harvard president Claudine Gay, I attribute my sources.
Among bloggers, and especially major news outfits, I am practically the only one who links to the BLS, BEA, Commerce Department etc, when writing about the economy.
If someone wants to know where I got my economic numbers from, I show the source. Hardly anyone else does.
Is AI Fair Use?
The New York Times says that AI can spew out vast chunks of its articles, without attribution.
But even with attribution, at what point does taking too much exceed fair use?
Unless the New York Times, Better Homes and Gardens, People, and all the other potential cases get settled, the courts have a major decision on fair use in 2024.
What About Bankruptcies?
I don’t think everything is coming up roses in 2024, and neither does Booth.
Commercial real estate is a big mess poised to get bigger, auto loan defaults are rising, and credit card debt topped $1 trillion for the first time.
Nearly everyone thinks the Fed engineered a soft landing.
Expect something else, either a hard landing or a resurgence in inflation, or both of those as in another dose of stagflation.
Tariff and energy policy are both economic madness and inflationary. A wave of bankruptcies could be deflationary, at least temporarily, but this will not be another 2007-2009 deflationary crash with people walking away from their homes.
And expect a trade war no matter who wins in 2024.
201 views