I will not talk you out of greatness — sorry I’m not sorry.

If you advise brands, stop letting them peddle products with others' IP. Be the good partner, I promise you rightsholders are open to making licensing fast, easy, and in many cases less expensive than you think.

The cost of doing it right is always less than the cost of getting caught.

It’s holding the line and setting boundaries in a market where the lines btwn personal and commercial use are being blurred on purpose as an end-run around protections the EULA affords. If you rep writers & artists, now is the time to educate, and act.

Courts have upheld this for decades, and no amount of fast-fashion, "creator economy" influencer culture is going to rewrite that.

For rightsholders and their advisors, this is the moment to get loud. Enforcement matters, and not just for revenues.

The idea that “everyone does it” or “the music was on TikTok” is the same logic the legal dept decries and marketing and sales hope matters, but it's getting companies blindsided by seven-figure claims. This isn't nuanced: using music to sell something? Get a license. Period.

A warning shot to AI developers that the era of unregulated data mining may be ending? Sure, but it may be placing an undue burden on individuals and rightsholders.

My analysis: lnkd.in/ebG2QRjT

No registration required. No fair use defense. Just a clear path to court. It’s a bold, bipartisan signal that Congress is no longer content to let the courts sort it out piecemeal.

The bill creates a new federal tort for artists and consumers whose data or works have been scraped, trained on, or mimicked by generative AI systems. It bypasses the limitations of copyright law, sidesteps the DMCA, and removes Section 230 immunity for AI-generated content.

Artificial streaming fraud is theft, and it demands immediate, coordinated action.

Support this call for clarity and accountability and join us in protecting the integrity of digital music.

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Of course the case in NC cost rightsholders $10M. These aren’t edge cases, they’re evidence of a growing pattern of digital fraud that violates platform terms, breaches licensing agreements, and in many cases constitutes wire fraud, civil and criminal conspiracy, and criminal copyright infringement.

In Sweden, criminal gangs have reportedly used Spotify to launder money and recruit members by purchasing fake streams for affiliated artists, converting illicit cash into royalties and visibility. Authorities called Spotify “an ATM” for these groups.

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March of last year, in Denmark, a man was sentenced to 18 months in prison for using bots to generate $300,000 in fraudulent royalties, including copyright violations. t.co/scOLePcqEI

Recent cases make this clear:

In Brazil, authorities uncovered a scheme involving 28 million fake streams, fake artist profiles, and AI-generated music, resulting in arrests and asset seizures exceeding $400,000. t.co/yZqQQs4AX5

AI is a real concern. Cases like the Anthropic class action may reshape the legal landscape and change behavior, but AI's direct negative impact is still somewhat abstracted.

Artificial streaming is happening now, and it’s prodigious, organized, criminal, and global.

68th Annual Report of the Register of Copyrights, 1966
www.copyright.gov/reports/annu...

The crucial question appears to be whether the work is basically one of human authorship, with the computer merely being an assisting instrument, or whether the traditional elements of authorship in the work...were actually conceived and executed not by man but by a machine."

...This year, copyright was claimed for an abstract drawing, and for compilations of various kinds, which were at least partly the "work" of computers. It is certain that both the number of works proximately produced or "written" by computers...

You can watch it in its entirety on Paramount +
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