On June 24, 2024, the RIAA announced two separate copyright infringement lawsuits targeting what many believe are the most impressive services in the generative AI music market.

Unchartered Labs, the owner of Udio, was sued in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. At the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, the target was Suno, Inc. the company behind the AI platform of the same name.

Plaintiffs including UMG Recordings, Capitol Records, Sony Music Entertainment, Atlantic Records and Warner Records, dominate both lawsuits, which contain broadly similar claims against both AI companies. The labels claim that Udio and Suno “copied decades worth of the world’s most popular sound recordings” and then ingested those copies into AI models to generate outputs that “imitate the qualities of genuine human sound recordings” for the purpose of generating profit.

The labels claim that both businesses “exploit copyrighted sound recordings without permission” in support of services that threaten to “displace the genuine human artistry that is at the heart of copyright protection.” Any attempt to mount defenses based on fair use, the labels warned , would end in failure.

AI Companies Confidently Answer Respective Complaints

Given the similarities in the labels’ complaints, Udio and Suno have taken the logical step of consolidating their respective defenses at Latham & Watkins LLP, an international law firm with a specialist artificial intelligence team. Filed earlier today, Udio and Suno’s individual answers have much in common, as one would expect given the nature of the complaints.

Details specific to each case see the answers diverge on occasion but where it really matters, Udio and Suno are not only in lockstep but seemingly brimming with confidence.

In opening preliminary statements, the companies explain that their respective platforms are tools for making new music, original music, and that’s how they’re being used; to create “new songs that didn’t and often couldn’t previously exist.”

“Like a human musician, [Suno/Udio] did not develop its capabilities in a vacuum. It is the product of extensive analysis and study of the building blocks of music: what various genres and styles sound like; how songs in those genres and styles are harmonized and structured; the characteristic timbres of the instruments and vocalizations in those genres and styles; and so on,” the answers begin.

“Those genres and styles—the recognizable sounds of opera, or jazz, or rap music—are not something that anyone owns. Our intellectual property laws have always been carefully calibrated to avoid allowing anyone to monopolize a form of artistic expression, whether a sonnet or a pop song. IP rights can attach to a particular recorded rendition of a song in one of those genres or styles. But not to the genre or style itself.”

Labels Control Using Copyright, No Libraries of Music Exist

The AI companies are not the first to describe the plaintiff RIAA labels as dominating forces in the music industry. Claims that these copyright lawsuits, like many that preceded them, are ultimately about control rather than infringement, are in no way unique either. Yet, in these lawsuits, unlike any others before them, potential loss of control meets non-typical copyright infringement claims, as both answers explain.

“[The labels] frame their concern as one about ‘copies’ of their recordings made in the process of developing the technology — that is, copies never heard or seen by anyone, made solely to analyze the sonic and stylistic patterns of the universe of pre-existing musical expression. But what the major record labels really don’t want is competition.”

The labels’ position is that any competition must be legal, and the AI companies state quite clearly that the law permits the use of copyrighted works in these circumstances. Suno and Udio also make it clear that snippets of copyrighted music aren’t stored as a library of pre-existing content in the neural networks of their AI models, “outputting a collage of ‘samples’ stitched together from existing recordings” when prompted by users.

No Storage of Music, Only Information About Musical Styles

“[The neural networks were] constructed by showing the program tens of millions of instances of different kinds of recordings,” Suno explains.

“From analyzing their constitutive elements, the model derived a staggeringly complex collection of statistical insights about the auditory characteristics of those recordings — what types of sounds tend to appear in which kinds of music; what the shape of a pop song tends to look like; how the drum beat typically varies from country to rock to hip-hop; what the guitar tone tends to sound like in those different genres; and so on.”

These models are vast stores, not of copyrighted music, the defendants say, but information about what musical styles consist of, and it’s from that information new music is made.

Input to AI Was Fair Use, AI Output is Non-Infringing

Most copyright lawsuits in the music industry are about reproduction and public distribution of identified copyright works, but that’s certainly not the case here.

“The Complaint explicitly disavows any contention that any output ever generated by Udio has infringed their rights. While it includes a variety of examples of outputs that allegedly resemble certain pre-existing songs, the Complaint goes out of its way to say that it is not alleging that those outputs constitute actionable copyright infringement.”

With Udio declaring that, as a matter of law, “that key point makes all the difference,” Suno’s conclusion is served raw.

“That concession will ultimately prove fatal to Plaintiffs’ claims. It is fair use under copyright law to make a copy of a protected work as part of a back-end technological process, invisible to the public, in the service of creating an ultimately non-infringing new product.”

Noting that Congress enacted the first copyright law in 1791, Suno says that in the 233 years since, not a single case has ever reached a contrary conclusion.

In Authors Guild v. Google, Inc. , copying all the books in numerous university libraries, to create a commercial, full-text searchable index, was found to be fair use. The same conclusion was reached in Kelly v. Arriba SoftCorp , where copying vast amounts of online images to create thumbnails was deemed transformative fair use. Likewise, A.V. ex rel. Vanderhye v. iParadigms , where copying students’ papers into a plagiarism tool was also deemed fair use.

Labels Own Copyrighted Music, Nobody Owns Musical Styles

In addition to addressing allegations unique to their individual cases, the AI companies accuse the labels of various types of anti-competitive behavior. Imposing conditions to prevent streaming services obtaining licensed music from smaller labels at lower rates, seeking to impose a “no AI” policy on licensees, to claims that they “may have responded to outreach from potential commercial counterparties by engaging in one or more concerted refusals to deal.”

The defendants say this type of behavior is fueled by the labels’ dominant control of copyrighted works and by extension, the overall market. Here, however, ownership of copyrighted music is trumped by the existence and knowledge of musical styles, over which nobody can claim ownership or seek to control.

“No one owns musical styles. Developing a tool to empower many more people to create music, by scrupulously analyzing what the building blocks of different styles consist of, is a quintessential fair use under longstanding and unbroken copyright doctrine.

“Plaintiffs’ contrary vision is fundamentally inconsistent with the law and its underlying values.”

Suno and Udio’s answers to the RIAA’s lawsuits are available here ( 1 , 2 , pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

On June 24, 2024, the RIAA announced two separate copyright infringement lawsuits targeting what many believe are the most impressive services in the generative AI music market.

Unchartered Labs, the owner of Udio, was sued in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. At the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, the target was Suno, Inc. the company behind the AI platform of the same name.

Plaintiffs including UMG Recordings, Capitol Records, Sony Music Entertainment, Atlantic Records and Warner Records, dominate both lawsuits, which contain broadly similar claims against both AI companies. The labels claim that Udio and Suno “copied decades worth of the world’s most popular sound recordings” and then ingested those copies into AI models to generate outputs that “imitate the qualities of genuine human sound recordings” for the purpose of generating profit.

The labels claim that both businesses “exploit copyrighted sound recordings without permission” in support of services that threaten to “displace the genuine human artistry that is at the heart of copyright protection.” Any attempt to mount defenses based on fair use, the labels warned , would end in failure.

AI Companies Confidently Answer Respective Complaints

Given the similarities in the labels’ complaints, Udio and Suno have taken the logical step of consolidating their respective defenses at Latham & Watkins LLP, an international law firm with a specialist artificial intelligence team. Filed earlier today, Udio and Suno’s individual answers have much in common, as one would expect given the nature of the complaints.

Details specific to each case see the answers diverge on occasion but where it really matters, Udio and Suno are not only in lockstep but seemingly brimming with confidence.

In opening preliminary statements, the companies explain that their respective platforms are tools for making new music, original music, and that’s how they’re being used; to create “new songs that didn’t and often couldn’t previously exist.”

“Like a human musician, [Suno/Udio] did not develop its capabilities in a vacuum. It is the product of extensive analysis and study of the building blocks of music: what various genres and styles sound like; how songs in those genres and styles are harmonized and structured; the characteristic timbres of the instruments and vocalizations in those genres and styles; and so on,” the answers begin.

“Those genres and styles—the recognizable sounds of opera, or jazz, or rap music—are not something that anyone owns. Our intellectual property laws have always been carefully calibrated to avoid allowing anyone to monopolize a form of artistic expression, whether a sonnet or a pop song. IP rights can attach to a particular recorded rendition of a song in one of those genres or styles. But not to the genre or style itself.”

Labels Control Using Copyright, No Libraries of Music Exist

The AI companies are not the first to describe the plaintiff RIAA labels as dominating forces in the music industry. Claims that these copyright lawsuits, like many that preceded them, are ultimately about control rather than infringement, are in no way unique either. Yet, in these lawsuits, unlike any others before them, potential loss of control meets non-typical copyright infringement claims, as both answers explain.

“[The labels] frame their concern as one about ‘copies’ of their recordings made in the process of developing the technology — that is, copies never heard or seen by anyone, made solely to analyze the sonic and stylistic patterns of the universe of pre-existing musical expression. But what the major record labels really don’t want is competition.”

The labels’ position is that any competition must be legal, and the AI companies state quite clearly that the law permits the use of copyrighted works in these circumstances. Suno and Udio also make it clear that snippets of copyrighted music aren’t stored as a library of pre-existing content in the neural networks of their AI models, “outputting a collage of ‘samples’ stitched together from existing recordings” when prompted by users.

No Storage of Music, Only Information About Musical Styles

“[The neural networks were] constructed by showing the program tens of millions of instances of different kinds of recordings,” Suno explains.

“From analyzing their constitutive elements, the model derived a staggeringly complex collection of statistical insights about the auditory characteristics of those recordings — what types of sounds tend to appear in which kinds of music; what the shape of a pop song tends to look like; how the drum beat typically varies from country to rock to hip-hop; what the guitar tone tends to sound like in those different genres; and so on.”

These models are vast stores, not of copyrighted music, the defendants say, but information about what musical styles consist of, and it’s from that information new music is made.

Input to AI Was Fair Use, AI Output is Non-Infringing

Most copyright lawsuits in the music industry are about reproduction and public distribution of identified copyright works, but that’s certainly not the case here.

“The Complaint explicitly disavows any contention that any output ever generated by Udio has infringed their rights. While it includes a variety of examples of outputs that allegedly resemble certain pre-existing songs, the Complaint goes out of its way to say that it is not alleging that those outputs constitute actionable copyright infringement.”

With Udio declaring that, as a matter of law, “that key point makes all the difference,” Suno’s conclusion is served raw.

“That concession will ultimately prove fatal to Plaintiffs’ claims. It is fair use under copyright law to make a copy of a protected work as part of a back-end technological process, invisible to the public, in the service of creating an ultimately non-infringing new product.”

Noting that Congress enacted the first copyright law in 1791, Suno says that in the 233 years since, not a single case has ever reached a contrary conclusion.

In Authors Guild v. Google, Inc. , copying all the books in numerous university libraries, to create a commercial, full-text searchable index, was found to be fair use. The same conclusion was reached in Kelly v. Arriba SoftCorp , where copying vast amounts of online images to create thumbnails was deemed transformative fair use. Likewise, A.V. ex rel. Vanderhye v. iParadigms , where copying students’ papers into a plagiarism tool was also deemed fair use.

Labels Own Copyrighted Music, Nobody Owns Musical Styles

In addition to addressing allegations unique to their individual cases, the AI companies accuse the labels of various types of anti-competitive behavior. Imposing conditions to prevent streaming services obtaining licensed music from smaller labels at lower rates, seeking to impose a “no AI” policy on licensees, to claims that they “may have responded to outreach from potential commercial counterparties by engaging in one or more concerted refusals to deal.”

The defendants say this type of behavior is fueled by the labels’ dominant control of copyrighted works and by extension, the overall market. Here, however, ownership of copyrighted music is trumped by the existence and knowledge of musical styles, over which nobody can claim ownership or seek to control.

“No one owns musical styles. Developing a tool to empower many more people to create music, by scrupulously analyzing what the building blocks of different styles consist of, is a quintessential fair use under longstanding and unbroken copyright doctrine.

“Plaintiffs’ contrary vision is fundamentally inconsistent with the law and its underlying values.”

Suno and Udio’s answers to the RIAA’s lawsuits are available here ( 1 , 2 , pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

On June 24, 2024, the RIAA announced two separate copyright infringement lawsuits targeting what many believe are the most impressive services in the generative AI music market.

Unchartered Labs, the owner of Udio, was sued in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. At the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, the target was Suno, Inc. the company behind the AI platform of the same name.

Plaintiffs including UMG Recordings, Capitol Records, Sony Music Entertainment, Atlantic Records and Warner Records, dominate both lawsuits, which contain broadly similar claims against both AI companies. The labels claim that Udio and Suno “copied decades worth of the world’s most popular sound recordings” and then ingested those copies into AI models to generate outputs that “imitate the qualities of genuine human sound recordings” for the purpose of generating profit.

The labels claim that both businesses “exploit copyrighted sound recordings without permission” in support of services that threaten to “displace the genuine human artistry that is at the heart of copyright protection.” Any attempt to mount defenses based on fair use, the labels warned , would end in failure.

AI Companies Confidently Answer Respective Complaints

Given the similarities in the labels’ complaints, Udio and Suno have taken the logical step of consolidating their respective defenses at Latham & Watkins LLP, an international law firm with a specialist artificial intelligence team. Filed earlier today, Udio and Suno’s individual answers have much in common, as one would expect given the nature of the complaints.

Details specific to each case see the answers diverge on occasion but where it really matters, Udio and Suno are not only in lockstep but seemingly brimming with confidence.

In opening preliminary statements, the companies explain that their respective platforms are tools for making new music, original music, and that’s how they’re being used; to create “new songs that didn’t and often couldn’t previously exist.”

“Like a human musician, [Suno/Udio] did not develop its capabilities in a vacuum. It is the product of extensive analysis and study of the building blocks of music: what various genres and styles sound like; how songs in those genres and styles are harmonized and structured; the characteristic timbres of the instruments and vocalizations in those genres and styles; and so on,” the answers begin.

“Those genres and styles—the recognizable sounds of opera, or jazz, or rap music—are not something that anyone owns. Our intellectual property laws have always been carefully calibrated to avoid allowing anyone to monopolize a form of artistic expression, whether a sonnet or a pop song. IP rights can attach to a particular recorded rendition of a song in one of those genres or styles. But not to the genre or style itself.”

Labels Control Using Copyright, No Libraries of Music Exist

The AI companies are not the first to describe the plaintiff RIAA labels as dominating forces in the music industry. Claims that these copyright lawsuits, like many that preceded them, are ultimately about control rather than infringement, are in no way unique either. Yet, in these lawsuits, unlike any others before them, potential loss of control meets non-typical copyright infringement claims, as both answers explain.

“[The labels] frame their concern as one about ‘copies’ of their recordings made in the process of developing the technology — that is, copies never heard or seen by anyone, made solely to analyze the sonic and stylistic patterns of the universe of pre-existing musical expression. But what the major record labels really don’t want is competition.”

The labels’ position is that any competition must be legal, and the AI companies state quite clearly that the law permits the use of copyrighted works in these circumstances. Suno and Udio also make it clear that snippets of copyrighted music aren’t stored as a library of pre-existing content in the neural networks of their AI models, “outputting a collage of ‘samples’ stitched together from existing recordings” when prompted by users.

No Storage of Music, Only Information About Musical Styles

“[The neural networks were] constructed by showing the program tens of millions of instances of different kinds of recordings,” Suno explains.

“From analyzing their constitutive elements, the model derived a staggeringly complex collection of statistical insights about the auditory characteristics of those recordings — what types of sounds tend to appear in which kinds of music; what the shape of a pop song tends to look like; how the drum beat typically varies from country to rock to hip-hop; what the guitar tone tends to sound like in those different genres; and so on.”

These models are vast stores, not of copyrighted music, the defendants say, but information about what musical styles consist of, and it’s from that information new music is made.

Input to AI Was Fair Use, AI Output is Non-Infringing

Most copyright lawsuits in the music industry are about reproduction and public distribution of identified copyright works, but that’s certainly not the case here.

“The Complaint explicitly disavows any contention that any output ever generated by Udio has infringed their rights. While it includes a variety of examples of outputs that allegedly resemble certain pre-existing songs, the Complaint goes out of its way to say that it is not alleging that those outputs constitute actionable copyright infringement.”

With Udio declaring that, as a matter of law, “that key point makes all the difference,” Suno’s conclusion is served raw.

“That concession will ultimately prove fatal to Plaintiffs’ claims. It is fair use under copyright law to make a copy of a protected work as part of a back-end technological process, invisible to the public, in the service of creating an ultimately non-infringing new product.”

Noting that Congress enacted the first copyright law in 1791, Suno says that in the 233 years since, not a single case has ever reached a contrary conclusion.

In Authors Guild v. Google, Inc. , copying all the books in numerous university libraries, to create a commercial, full-text searchable index, was found to be fair use. The same conclusion was reached in Kelly v. Arriba SoftCorp , where copying vast amounts of online images to create thumbnails was deemed transformative fair use. Likewise, A.V. ex rel. Vanderhye v. iParadigms , where copying students’ papers into a plagiarism tool was also deemed fair use.

Labels Own Copyrighted Music, Nobody Owns Musical Styles

In addition to addressing allegations unique to their individual cases, the AI companies accuse the labels of various types of anti-competitive behavior. Imposing conditions to prevent streaming services obtaining licensed music from smaller labels at lower rates, seeking to impose a “no AI” policy on licensees, to claims that they “may have responded to outreach from potential commercial counterparties by engaging in one or more concerted refusals to deal.”

The defendants say this type of behavior is fueled by the labels’ dominant control of copyrighted works and by extension, the overall market. Here, however, ownership of copyrighted music is trumped by the existence and knowledge of musical styles, over which nobody can claim ownership or seek to control.

“No one owns musical styles. Developing a tool to empower many more people to create music, by scrupulously analyzing what the building blocks of different styles consist of, is a quintessential fair use under longstanding and unbroken copyright doctrine.

“Plaintiffs’ contrary vision is fundamentally inconsistent with the law and its underlying values.”

Suno and Udio’s answers to the RIAA’s lawsuits are available here ( 1 , 2 , pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Three years after the raids that dismantled his Megaupload empire, it was clear that Kim Dotcom was digging in for the long haul.

Whether even he anticipated just how long that haul would be is unclear. Having taken every imaginable step to make his prosecution and likely extradition as difficult as possible, it certainly can’t be ruled out.

For Dotcom, information has proven to be a valuable and flexible commodity; in 2015 he made dozens of requests to numerous government departments to gain what he described as ‘urgent’ access to information to assist in his looming extradition defense.

Vexatious Requests Denied

With Dotcom’s case already a political hot potato, decisions were made to transfer these requests, mostly under s39 of the Privacy Act, to then-Solicitor General Chris Finlayson. Due to their broad scope, allegedly including demands for trivial information, Finlayson labeled the requests frivolous and ultimately vexatious.

The Solicitor General noted that the July 2015 information requests were labeled urgent because Dotcom’s extradition eligibility hearing was due to take place in September at the District Court. However, the nature of the requests led him to conclude that their true purpose was to disrupt that hearing and since they weren’t made in good faith, he rejected them all.

Dotcom Takes Legal Action

Dotcom denied he had an ulterior motive and followed up with legal action, claiming that the government was holding back information to which he was legally entitled.

In Dotcom v Crown Law Office [2018] NZHRRT 7 ( pdf ) , the Human Rights Review Tribunal found that the Crown had indeed interfered with Kim Dotcom’s privacy by rejecting what was described as “multiple, near identical, Privacy Act requests made to all Ministers and nearly every government department for all personal information held about him.”

For “loss of dignity or injury to feelings” Dotcom won NZ$60,000 in damages plus another NZ$30,000 to compensate for the lack of disclosure. The Crown appealed that decision and in September 2018 the matter was heard at the High Court in Wellington.

High Court Sides With Solicitor-General

The High Court agreed with the Solicitor-General, noting that the requests were transferred for lawful reasons. The Court described the earlier damages award in favor of Dotcom as “ wholly erroneous .” There was no evidence to show that the information being sought was even relevant to the extradition proceedings, the High Court ruled.

Months earlier, the government had actually started to respond to Dotcom’s requests and by mid-June 2018, “tranches of information” had been handed over to Dotcom, with a few exceptions for legal reasons.

Nevertheless, the High Court’s decision in October 2018 was labeled “a bad day for human rights” by Dotcom, who took his many grievances to the Court of Appeal.

Court of Appeal Sides With Dotcom

The Court of Appeal eventually sided with Dotcom and, by broad extension, the decision in his favor at the Human Rights Review Tribunal earlier. The transfer of the information requests between government departments breached Dotcom’s privacy, the Court of Appeal confirmed. All that remained was to determine the scale of Dotcom’s damages award.

Having previously ruled in favor of Dotcom with an award of NZ$90,000, in February 2022 the Tribunal decided that this time around, Dotcom wouldn’t receive a penny. In response, Dotcom appealed once more to the High Court, but it also declined to award him damages. When Dotcom applied for leave to appeal the High Court’s decision at the Court of Appeal, the High Court rejected that too.

Application for Special Leave to Appeal

Never one to give up, Dotcom filed an application at the Court of Appeal. He requested special leave to appeal the decision of the High Court, which had dismissed his appeal against the decision of the Human Rights Review Tribunal, which had awarded him zero damages.

Late last month, Dotcom’s application for special leave to appeal was declined by the Court of Appeal. The reasoning behind that decision is laid out in considerable detail in the court’s decision, which is linked below.

What is clear, however, is that Dotcom’s focus on receiving an award for damages for “loss of benefit” under New Zealand’s Privacy Act, concerned his inability to use the information requested during the extradition proceedings. That failed to move the needle at the Court of Appeal.

“It is clear from the various judgments given in the extradition proceedings that there would have been no benefit to Mr Dotcom if he had received the information requested at the time the extradition proceedings were underway. The Courts consistently held that the peripheral matters raised by Mr Dotcom were irrelevant to the extradition process, given the Court’s limited role in determining a person’s eligibility for surrender,” the Court of Appeal’s decision reads.

“Following the Tribunal complaint decision, Mr Dotcom sought to raise before this Court the fact that the Tribunal had found that there had been an interference with his privacy and had awarded him [NZ]$90,000 in damages for breach of the 1993 Act. Mr Dotcom argued that the Tribunal complaint decision was relevant to the extradition hearing, because it confirmed an abuse of process that would undermine public confidence in the judicial system.

“This Court disagreed. It noted that the conduct at issue did not come close to establishing the high threshold required to stay extradition proceedings and that the attempt to rely on it for this purpose was misconceived.”

Tactics Noted But Ultimately Unsuccessful

Other matters were also considered by the Court, none of which went in Dotcom’s favor. In closing, the Court of Appeal made a general assessment of events relating to this application. From a few steps back, attributing it to most side issues raised by the defense, before numerous courts in more recent years, might not be an especially big stretch.

“This Court’s primary function is to clarify the law. It is not every alleged error of law that is of such importance, either generally or to the parties, as to justify the further pursuit of issues which have already been considered on multiple occasions. That is very much the case with the present application,” the decision reads.

In the absence of “any other reason” that would make it appropriate to grant Dotcom special leave to appeal, the application was denied.

The decision is available here ( pdf )

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Three years after the raids that dismantled his Megaupload empire, it was clear that Kim Dotcom was digging in for the long haul.

Whether even he anticipated just how long that haul would be is unclear. Having taken every imaginable step to make his prosecution and likely extradition as difficult as possible, it certainly can’t be ruled out.

For Dotcom, information has proven to be a valuable and flexible commodity; in 2015 he made dozens of requests to numerous government departments to gain what he described as ‘urgent’ access to information to assist in his looming extradition defense.

Vexatious Requests Denied

With Dotcom’s case already a political hot potato, decisions were made to transfer these requests, mostly under s39 of the Privacy Act, to then-Solicitor General Chris Finlayson. Due to their broad scope, allegedly including demands for trivial information, Finlayson labeled the requests frivolous and ultimately vexatious.

The Solicitor General noted that the July 2015 information requests were labeled urgent because Dotcom’s extradition eligibility hearing was due to take place in September at the District Court. However, the nature of the requests led him to conclude that their true purpose was to disrupt that hearing and since they weren’t made in good faith, he rejected them all.

Dotcom Takes Legal Action

Dotcom denied he had an ulterior motive and followed up with legal action, claiming that the government was holding back information to which he was legally entitled.

In Dotcom v Crown Law Office [2018] NZHRRT 7 ( pdf ) , the Human Rights Review Tribunal found that the Crown had indeed interfered with Kim Dotcom’s privacy by rejecting what was described as “multiple, near identical, Privacy Act requests made to all Ministers and nearly every government department for all personal information held about him.”

For “loss of dignity or injury to feelings” Dotcom won NZ$60,000 in damages plus another NZ$30,000 to compensate for the lack of disclosure. The Crown appealed that decision and in September 2018 the matter was heard at the High Court in Wellington.

High Court Sides With Solicitor-General

The High Court agreed with the Solicitor-General, noting that the requests were transferred for lawful reasons. The Court described the earlier damages award in favor of Dotcom as “ wholly erroneous .” There was no evidence to show that the information being sought was even relevant to the extradition proceedings, the High Court ruled.

Months earlier, the government had actually started to respond to Dotcom’s requests and by mid-June 2018, “tranches of information” had been handed over to Dotcom, with a few exceptions for legal reasons.

Nevertheless, the High Court’s decision in October 2018 was labeled “a bad day for human rights” by Dotcom, who took his many grievances to the Court of Appeal.

Court of Appeal Sides With Dotcom

The Court of Appeal eventually sided with Dotcom and, by broad extension, the decision in his favor at the Human Rights Review Tribunal earlier. The transfer of the information requests between government departments breached Dotcom’s privacy, the Court of Appeal confirmed. All that remained was to determine the scale of Dotcom’s damages award.

Having previously ruled in favor of Dotcom with an award of NZ$90,000, in February 2022 the Tribunal decided that this time around, Dotcom wouldn’t receive a penny. In response, Dotcom appealed once more to the High Court, but it also declined to award him damages. When Dotcom applied for leave to appeal the High Court’s decision at the Court of Appeal, the High Court rejected that too.

Application for Special Leave to Appeal

Never one to give up, Dotcom filed an application at the Court of Appeal. He requested special leave to appeal the decision of the High Court, which had dismissed his appeal against the decision of the Human Rights Review Tribunal, which had awarded him zero damages.

Late last month, Dotcom’s application for special leave to appeal was declined by the Court of Appeal. The reasoning behind that decision is laid out in considerable detail in the court’s decision, which is linked below.

What is clear, however, is that Dotcom’s focus on receiving an award for damages for “loss of benefit” under New Zealand’s Privacy Act, concerned his inability to use the information requested during the extradition proceedings. That failed to move the needle at the Court of Appeal.

“It is clear from the various judgments given in the extradition proceedings that there would have been no benefit to Mr Dotcom if he had received the information requested at the time the extradition proceedings were underway. The Courts consistently held that the peripheral matters raised by Mr Dotcom were irrelevant to the extradition process, given the Court’s limited role in determining a person’s eligibility for surrender,” the Court of Appeal’s decision reads.

“Following the Tribunal complaint decision, Mr Dotcom sought to raise before this Court the fact that the Tribunal had found that there had been an interference with his privacy and had awarded him [NZ]$90,000 in damages for breach of the 1993 Act. Mr Dotcom argued that the Tribunal complaint decision was relevant to the extradition hearing, because it confirmed an abuse of process that would undermine public confidence in the judicial system.

“This Court disagreed. It noted that the conduct at issue did not come close to establishing the high threshold required to stay extradition proceedings and that the attempt to rely on it for this purpose was misconceived.”

Tactics Noted But Ultimately Unsuccessful

Other matters were also considered by the Court, none of which went in Dotcom’s favor. In closing, the Court of Appeal made a general assessment of events relating to this application. From a few steps back, attributing it to most side issues raised by the defense, before numerous courts in more recent years, might not be an especially big stretch.

“This Court’s primary function is to clarify the law. It is not every alleged error of law that is of such importance, either generally or to the parties, as to justify the further pursuit of issues which have already been considered on multiple occasions. That is very much the case with the present application,” the decision reads.

In the absence of “any other reason” that would make it appropriate to grant Dotcom special leave to appeal, the application was denied.

The decision is available here ( pdf )

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Three years after the raids that dismantled his Megaupload empire, it was clear that Kim Dotcom was digging in for the long haul.

Whether even he anticipated just how long that haul would be is unclear. Having taken every imaginable step to make his prosecution and likely extradition as difficult as possible, it certainly can’t be ruled out.

For Dotcom, information has proven to be a valuable and flexible commodity; in 2015 he made dozens of requests to numerous government departments to gain what he described as ‘urgent’ access to information to assist in his looming extradition defense.

Vexatious Requests Denied

With Dotcom’s case already a political hot potato, decisions were made to transfer these requests, mostly under s39 of the Privacy Act, to then-Solicitor General Chris Finlayson. Due to their broad scope, allegedly including demands for trivial information, Finlayson labeled the requests frivolous and ultimately vexatious.

The Solicitor General noted that the July 2015 information requests were labeled urgent because Dotcom’s extradition eligibility hearing was due to take place in September at the District Court. However, the nature of the requests led him to conclude that their true purpose was to disrupt that hearing and since they weren’t made in good faith, he rejected them all.

Dotcom Takes Legal Action

Dotcom denied he had an ulterior motive and followed up with legal action, claiming that the government was holding back information to which he was legally entitled.

In Dotcom v Crown Law Office [2018] NZHRRT 7 ( pdf ) , the Human Rights Review Tribunal found that the Crown had indeed interfered with Kim Dotcom’s privacy by rejecting what was described as “multiple, near identical, Privacy Act requests made to all Ministers and nearly every government department for all personal information held about him.”

For “loss of dignity or injury to feelings” Dotcom won NZ$60,000 in damages plus another NZ$30,000 to compensate for the lack of disclosure. The Crown appealed that decision and in September 2018 the matter was heard at the High Court in Wellington.

High Court Sides With Solicitor-General

The High Court agreed with the Solicitor-General, noting that the requests were transferred for lawful reasons. The Court described the earlier damages award in favor of Dotcom as “ wholly erroneous .” There was no evidence to show that the information being sought was even relevant to the extradition proceedings, the High Court ruled.

Months earlier, the government had actually started to respond to Dotcom’s requests and by mid-June 2018, “tranches of information” had been handed over to Dotcom, with a few exceptions for legal reasons.

Nevertheless, the High Court’s decision in October 2018 was labeled “a bad day for human rights” by Dotcom, who took his many grievances to the Court of Appeal.

Court of Appeal Sides With Dotcom

The Court of Appeal eventually sided with Dotcom and, by broad extension, the decision in his favor at the Human Rights Review Tribunal earlier. The transfer of the information requests between government departments breached Dotcom’s privacy, the Court of Appeal confirmed. All that remained was to determine the scale of Dotcom’s damages award.

Having previously ruled in favor of Dotcom with an award of NZ$90,000, in February 2022 the Tribunal decided that this time around, Dotcom wouldn’t receive a penny. In response, Dotcom appealed once more to the High Court, but it also declined to award him damages. When Dotcom applied for leave to appeal the High Court’s decision at the Court of Appeal, the High Court rejected that too.

Application for Special Leave to Appeal

Never one to give up, Dotcom filed an application at the Court of Appeal. He requested special leave to appeal the decision of the High Court, which had dismissed his appeal against the decision of the Human Rights Review Tribunal, which had awarded him zero damages.

Late last month, Dotcom’s application for special leave to appeal was declined by the Court of Appeal. The reasoning behind that decision is laid out in considerable detail in the court’s decision, which is linked below.

What is clear, however, is that Dotcom’s focus on receiving an award for damages for “loss of benefit” under New Zealand’s Privacy Act, concerned his inability to use the information requested during the extradition proceedings. That failed to move the needle at the Court of Appeal.

“It is clear from the various judgments given in the extradition proceedings that there would have been no benefit to Mr Dotcom if he had received the information requested at the time the extradition proceedings were underway. The Courts consistently held that the peripheral matters raised by Mr Dotcom were irrelevant to the extradition process, given the Court’s limited role in determining a person’s eligibility for surrender,” the Court of Appeal’s decision reads.

“Following the Tribunal complaint decision, Mr Dotcom sought to raise before this Court the fact that the Tribunal had found that there had been an interference with his privacy and had awarded him [NZ]$90,000 in damages for breach of the 1993 Act. Mr Dotcom argued that the Tribunal complaint decision was relevant to the extradition hearing, because it confirmed an abuse of process that would undermine public confidence in the judicial system.

“This Court disagreed. It noted that the conduct at issue did not come close to establishing the high threshold required to stay extradition proceedings and that the attempt to rely on it for this purpose was misconceived.”

Tactics Noted But Ultimately Unsuccessful

Other matters were also considered by the Court, none of which went in Dotcom’s favor. In closing, the Court of Appeal made a general assessment of events relating to this application. From a few steps back, attributing it to most side issues raised by the defense, before numerous courts in more recent years, might not be an especially big stretch.

“This Court’s primary function is to clarify the law. It is not every alleged error of law that is of such importance, either generally or to the parties, as to justify the further pursuit of issues which have already been considered on multiple occasions. That is very much the case with the present application,” the decision reads.

In the absence of “any other reason” that would make it appropriate to grant Dotcom special leave to appeal, the application was denied.

The decision is available here ( pdf )

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

The International Olympic Committee ( IOC ) is known to be very protective of its intellectual property rights.

Using an image of the Olympic rings or even just the word ‘Olympic’ can lead to legal trouble, especially when use takes place in a commercial context.

Most valuable, however, are IOC’s broadcasting rights. With literally billions of dollars at stake, the IOC and its licensing partners are doing everything in their power to prevent people from enjoying their events without permission.

From Torrents to Streaming

The IOC doesn’t shy away from using its power and influence to aid this cause. Sixteen years ago, for example, it reached out to the Swedish Government , asking for assistance to remove pirated Olympic broadcasts from The Pirate Bay.

Sweden couldn’t directly help with this problem, as it lacked any control over the notorious torrent site. The Pirate Bay itself didn’t feel threatened by the diplomatic pressure either. On the contrary, it temporarily renamed itself The Beijing Bay.

Today, Olympic piracy remains a problem, but the nature of the threat has evolved. Instead of worrying about torrents, the IOC sees live-streaming portals as the menace du jour . Unlike torrents, which can take a while to download, live streams directly compete with regular broadcasts.

Thousands of Olympic Takedowns

Last week, we already reported that the IOC, alongside others, obtained a site blocking order at the Paris Judicial Court. This order requires the large French ISPs to block access to several pirate streaming sites and IPTV providers.

While the blocking order is currently in effect, it is limited to 25 domain names and only applies to France. The Olympic Committee didn’t stop there though, it also enlisted anti-piracy partner Friend MTS to issue more traditional DMCA takedown requests.

Most of these DMCA efforts take place outside the public eye. With help from Google’s transparency report and the Lumen Database , we can nonetheless get a glimpse of the takedown action.

These public data reveal that IOC has sent numerous takedown notices this month, together targeting thousands of URLs. The notices request Google to remove these links from its search engine, to make it harder for the public to find pirated Olympics streams.

“Please note that the IOC is the owner of all rights in and to the Olympic Games and the Olympic Properties and, in particular, regarding the audio-visual content produced for the Olympic Summer Games Paris 2024,” IOC writes

“Such Olympic content may not be transmitted or communicated via the internet or any other interactive media or electronic medium without the express prior written approval of the IOC, which in accordance with our records, has not been granted to you.”

The Pirate Bay’s No Longer a Serious Threat

Thus far, the IOC has asked Google to remove 5,907 URLs from its search engine. The list is dominated by pirate streaming sites such as Antenasports.ru, Buff-streams.net, Francemag.com, and Watchsportnow.com. Interestingly, we didn’t spot a single torrent site.

Due to the delayed nature of torrents and direct downloads, in combination with widely available pirated live streams, it makes sense that sites such as The Pirate Bay are no longer considered a significant threat.

In fact, aside from the opening ceremony, we haven’t spotted any regularly scheduled ‘torrents’ of Olympic competitions. That’s a far cry from a decade ago when the original EZTV team openly revolted against IOC’s anti-piracy tactics by sharing numerous Olympic torrents.

“[T]he IOC is purely interested in making as much money from broadcasting as possible. We think differently, we believe everyone should be able to see these events freely and inspire future sport heroes!” EZTV told us at the time.

Fast-forward a decade, and the new EZTV team has no Olympic coverage and there is no “Paris Bay” either. IOC is still very much concerned with piracy, of course, but has shifted to a new set of targets.

Times change, but some things will always be the same.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

The International Olympic Committee ( IOC ) is known to be very protective of its intellectual property rights.

Using an image of the Olympic rings or even just the word ‘Olympic’ can lead to legal trouble, especially when use takes place in a commercial context.

Most valuable, however, are IOC’s broadcasting rights. With literally billions of dollars at stake, the IOC and its licensing partners are doing everything in their power to prevent people from enjoying their events without permission.

From Torrents to Streaming

The IOC doesn’t shy away from using its power and influence to aid this cause. Sixteen years ago, for example, it reached out to the Swedish Government , asking for assistance to remove pirated Olympic broadcasts from The Pirate Bay.

Sweden couldn’t directly help with this problem, as it lacked any control over the notorious torrent site. The Pirate Bay itself didn’t feel threatened by the diplomatic pressure either. On the contrary, it temporarily renamed itself The Beijing Bay.

Today, Olympic piracy remains a problem, but the nature of the threat has evolved. Instead of worrying about torrents, the IOC sees live-streaming portals as the menace du jour . Unlike torrents, which can take a while to download, live streams directly compete with regular broadcasts.

Thousands of Olympic Takedowns

Last week, we already reported that the IOC, alongside others, obtained a site blocking order at the Paris Judicial Court. This order requires the large French ISPs to block access to several pirate streaming sites and IPTV providers.

While the blocking order is currently in effect, it is limited to 25 domain names and only applies to France. The Olympic Committee didn’t stop there though, it also enlisted anti-piracy partner Friend MTS to issue more traditional DMCA takedown requests.

Most of these DMCA efforts take place outside the public eye. With help from Google’s transparency report and the Lumen Database , we can nonetheless get a glimpse of the takedown action.

These public data reveal that IOC has sent numerous takedown notices this month, together targeting thousands of URLs. The notices request Google to remove these links from its search engine, to make it harder for the public to find pirated Olympics streams.

“Please note that the IOC is the owner of all rights in and to the Olympic Games and the Olympic Properties and, in particular, regarding the audio-visual content produced for the Olympic Summer Games Paris 2024,” IOC writes

“Such Olympic content may not be transmitted or communicated via the internet or any other interactive media or electronic medium without the express prior written approval of the IOC, which in accordance with our records, has not been granted to you.”

The Pirate Bay’s No Longer a Serious Threat

Thus far, the IOC has asked Google to remove 5,907 URLs from its search engine. The list is dominated by pirate streaming sites such as Antenasports.ru, Buff-streams.net, Francemag.com, and Watchsportnow.com. Interestingly, we didn’t spot a single torrent site.

Due to the delayed nature of torrents and direct downloads, in combination with widely available pirated live streams, it makes sense that sites such as The Pirate Bay are no longer considered a significant threat.

In fact, aside from the opening ceremony, we haven’t spotted any regularly scheduled ‘torrents’ of Olympic competitions. That’s a far cry from a decade ago when the original EZTV team openly revolted against IOC’s anti-piracy tactics by sharing numerous Olympic torrents.

“[T]he IOC is purely interested in making as much money from broadcasting as possible. We think differently, we believe everyone should be able to see these events freely and inspire future sport heroes!” EZTV told us at the time.

Fast-forward a decade, and the new EZTV team has no Olympic coverage and there is no “Paris Bay” either. IOC is still very much concerned with piracy, of course, but has shifted to a new set of targets.

Times change, but some things will always be the same.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

The International Olympic Committee ( IOC ) is known to be very protective of its intellectual property rights.

Using an image of the Olympic rings or even just the word ‘Olympic’ can lead to legal trouble, especially when use takes place in a commercial context.

Most valuable, however, are IOC’s broadcasting rights. With literally billions of dollars at stake, the IOC and its licensing partners are doing everything in their power to prevent people from enjoying their events without permission.

From Torrents to Streaming

The IOC doesn’t shy away from using its power and influence to aid this cause. Sixteen years ago, for example, it reached out to the Swedish Government , asking for assistance to remove pirated Olympic broadcasts from The Pirate Bay.

Sweden couldn’t directly help with this problem, as it lacked any control over the notorious torrent site. The Pirate Bay itself didn’t feel threatened by the diplomatic pressure either. On the contrary, it temporarily renamed itself The Beijing Bay.

Today, Olympic piracy remains a problem, but the nature of the threat has evolved. Instead of worrying about torrents, the IOC sees live-streaming portals as the menace du jour . Unlike torrents, which can take a while to download, live streams directly compete with regular broadcasts.

Thousands of Olympic Takedowns

Last week, we already reported that the IOC, alongside others, obtained a site blocking order at the Paris Judicial Court. This order requires the large French ISPs to block access to several pirate streaming sites and IPTV providers.

While the blocking order is currently in effect, it is limited to 25 domain names and only applies to France. The Olympic Committee didn’t stop there though, it also enlisted anti-piracy partner Friend MTS to issue more traditional DMCA takedown requests.

Most of these DMCA efforts take place outside the public eye. With help from Google’s transparency report and the Lumen Database , we can nonetheless get a glimpse of the takedown action.

These public data reveal that IOC has sent numerous takedown notices this month, together targeting thousands of URLs. The notices request Google to remove these links from its search engine, to make it harder for the public to find pirated Olympics streams.

“Please note that the IOC is the owner of all rights in and to the Olympic Games and the Olympic Properties and, in particular, regarding the audio-visual content produced for the Olympic Summer Games Paris 2024,” IOC writes

“Such Olympic content may not be transmitted or communicated via the internet or any other interactive media or electronic medium without the express prior written approval of the IOC, which in accordance with our records, has not been granted to you.”

The Pirate Bay’s No Longer a Serious Threat

Thus far, the IOC has asked Google to remove 5,907 URLs from its search engine. The list is dominated by pirate streaming sites such as Antenasports.ru, Buff-streams.net, Francemag.com, and Watchsportnow.com. Interestingly, we didn’t spot a single torrent site.

Due to the delayed nature of torrents and direct downloads, in combination with widely available pirated live streams, it makes sense that sites such as The Pirate Bay are no longer considered a significant threat.

In fact, aside from the opening ceremony, we haven’t spotted any regularly scheduled ‘torrents’ of Olympic competitions. That’s a far cry from a decade ago when the original EZTV team openly revolted against IOC’s anti-piracy tactics by sharing numerous Olympic torrents.

“[T]he IOC is purely interested in making as much money from broadcasting as possible. We think differently, we believe everyone should be able to see these events freely and inspire future sport heroes!” EZTV told us at the time.

Fast-forward a decade, and the new EZTV team has no Olympic coverage and there is no “Paris Bay” either. IOC is still very much concerned with piracy, of course, but has shifted to a new set of targets.

Times change, but some things will always be the same.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.