Mike Masnick: The RIAA lawsuit against Suno and Udio is so so so bad. Not only does it not make sense, it actually goes against what the RIAA itself has been arguing in court lately.

The RIAA lawsuit against Suno and Udio is so so so bad. Not only does it not make sense, it actually goes against what the RIAA itself has been arguing in court lately.

You mean to tell me that the RIAA, which is known for suing kids and grandmothers in the past, might be filing a misguided lawsuit? No way. :-)

Reminds of RIAA legal wranglings back in the days of Napster, eh?

I dunno. That stuff was a really serious optics problem—the RIAA coming after 15yo kids for five-figure settlements for sharing three or four songs. “RIAA v. VC-backed AI startups” doesn’t provoke the same visceral reaction.

If anything it provokes the exact opposite response.

Cheering on the RIAA is essentially stating "I want the big companies (Sony, Warner, etc) represented by the RIAA to have even more power and money." The AI VC'ers may be skeezy. But the RIAA is clearly the BADDY...then and now.

I want copyright owners to get paid a fair amount when their music is used. If RIAA is the vehicle for ensuring that, I can live with it. "Fair" is, of course, a weasel word here, but life is complicated.

I want the original artists to receive full compensation for their work copyright should be time limited and not assignable beyond direct descendents/heirs

besides, this only means that it'll be that will get to be pitching for AI stuff there is no win to be had here :)

Thanks. Sometimes the memory doesn't work as well as it used to.

(giggles) Forget it Mike.... It's Copyright.

I'm reading over the filing right now, but I'd love your more detailed take at some point. :)

Thusfar they seem to be trying to pull "Million Monkeys On A Million Typewriters" cherry picking to make it sound like if you enter a description of a copyrighted song, you get something similar to that song out.... ... a claim readily debunked by, you know, actually using the service.

Like, they seem to have done their own version of Ed Newton-Rex's attempt to replicate Dancing Queen. Which he had to do who-knows-how-many generations to make and which he then had to crop down to just four seconds of vague similarity. Here's what happens without doing that: youtu.be/CYHhKIT94Kc

We Don't Jive: How Ed Rex's "We Can Jive" in Music Business Worldwide is dishonestyoutu.be In an article for Music Business Worldwide, Ed Newton-Rex argued that Udio just creates thinly disguised versions of copyrighted songs. To "prove" it, he gav...

The lawsuit seems to play fast and loose in wavering back and forth about exactly what they're alleging is the violation, throughout the whole filing: the training on the backend or the creations on the frontend. I can't imagine a judge will appreciate that.

I'll have a post sometime this week, pointing out that the RIAA itself rejected the theories in this lawsuit in another case not too long ago.

We love some judicial estoppel

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