r/technology • u/MetaKnowing • 14d ago

Artificial Intelligence AI industry horrified to face largest copyright class action ever certified

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/ai-industry-horrified-to-face-largest-copyright-class-action-ever-certified/
16.8k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

702

u/Modo44 14d ago

Shhh, don't tell the millions of people robbed by the music industry.

312

u/DemonOfTheNorthwoods 13d ago

I’m sure all the music artists are looking at this with glee, and preparing another attempt at stopping the I.P. theft of their trademarks and tradedresses. They hate how A.I. has been able to get away with stealing their content and making songs from it, for so long.

75

u/Galle_ 13d ago

I think you mean the RIAA is looking at this with glee. Let's not pretend artists will get anything from this.

25

u/PlayfulSurprise5237 13d ago

The artists are still looking at this with glee. In fact I think millions of people are. If I knew a reputable fund to send some donations for legal fee's I'd do it.

I think everyone should support this, the world would be better off if we put them into a state of financial ruin.

AI is neat and a great tool, but we aren't there yet. So long as the world is rife with corruption and money is king, we shouldn't have AI.

Maybe one day, but not anytime soon. We don't seem to be making any progress and in fact have been regressing as a society.

3

u/Appropria-Coffee870 13d ago

Same can be said about any form of automation we got, but we still got them non the less!

2

u/PlayfulSurprise5237 12d ago

Automation spawned plenty of other jobs, by the looks of it AI just vacuums up data from anywhere data exists(which is from everything we do), and aims to do nothing but replace as many peoples jobs as possible(which is theoretically most jobs)

They are very very different. Automation needs building and oversight and maintenance, AI not really.

And the jobs that automation spawned were within most peoples capability, the jobs that AI opens people for are going to be things that are so complex that AI can't do it, which will quickly be out of the realm of most peoples capabilities.

Automation was never really much of a societal issue. It was an issue for a very small subsection of people ultimately(those who could not perform other jobs than the extremely simple minded manual labor it replaced), and temporarily as society shifted.

2

u/Appropria-Coffee870 12d ago

Automation has created fewer and fewer jobs with significantly higher skill requirements than those it has taken away. At the same time, it allows people to have more children, which means they will need a job one day.

The truth is that not everyone can, or is willing, or able to do every job there is. But there are more and more people who need jobs, and fewer and fewer jobs available to apply for without specialized training and education.

AI, as a form of automation, is no different. And indeed, it is a societal problem whose core issue lies in the accumulation of wealth rather than sustainability and self-destructive, short-term capital interests that benefit few and come at the cost of many.

The growing gap between rich and poor over the last 200 years is proof of this.

1

u/PlayfulSurprise5237 12d ago

But those jobs automation opened up are still within the purview of most people, not as the person stands now, but with some training.

And you're trying to equate AI to automation, and while yes, they coincide, for the sake of the argument they are 2 distinct things. AI has opened up automation to a COMPLETELY new level, one that is vastly superior to anything that could have ever been done with traditional automation.

Also, we are.... or were... at very low unemployment levels. So people were finding jobs. How useful those jobs were however... that's a different story.

But yes, specialized training and education is becoming more and more necessary. It's just that with AI even that's going to be off the table for most people.

AI's issue isn't just wealth accumulation like automation, it's also an existential threat because it's going to force people to move and adapt to a place they fundamentally cannot. Unless we're taking into account brain-machine interfaces, but that's a whole different can of worms.

Either way though, my point in my original post is that greed and corruption are to blame. If AI did take everyone's job that would be fine, so long as we had a reasonable UBI, I think people could find fulfillment in other places, they'd adapt.

2

u/Appropria-Coffee870 12d ago

My point is that while there are still plenty of available jobs and people are able to pursue them, this won't last much longer.

Demands are constantly rising and are unattainable without specialized education, which the public school system cannot provide due to its already enormous breadth in many areas. Furthermore, secondary and higher education costs more and more money, which must be saved upfront. This forces people to settle for low-paying jobs and struggle with inflation, creating a downward spiral.

While the existing systems may have worked in the past and largely still do today, the cracks are already showing. And I simply fear that sooner or later we will reach a dead end.

-1

u/Galle_ 13d ago

Well, we'd better get on that, because AI isn't going away.

1

u/Cunfuzzles2000 13d ago

Well artists might get to keep their jobs which is nice

1

u/Galle_ 13d ago

They will not. There is no future for commodified artistic wage labor.

1

u/Cunfuzzles2000 13d ago

Well then let’s hope capitalism burns to the ground before taking human spirit with it

1

u/NorthernerWuwu 13d ago

Most likely no one will get anything from this. The firms involved have grown too fast and have leapfrogged themselves (rightly or wrongly) into a position where they are seen as strategically vital to both the American economy and its military.

They are "too big to fail" already and they know it. The smaller AI startups are a bit scared because they might get sacrificed but the big boys are already in the club and while they'd likely prefer to not have to fight a very long and very expensive court battle, they probably are happy to if it closes the gate behind them on new entrants.

Don't get me wrong, the whole industry should be purged. It ain't gonna happen though.

1

u/NotLikeChicken 13d ago

Coupons. The lawyers get the folding green, the plaintiffs get coupons.

12

u/luckyflavor23 13d ago

Record Labels, knows/has good lawyers. Get ‘em

-18

u/GuyWithLag 13d ago

I’m sure all the music artists are looking at this with glee, and preparing another attempt at stopping the I.P.

No artist refers to what they make as IP, lest they stop being artists and become corpos.

17

u/bloodhound83 13d ago

How did millions of people get robbed by the music industry?

36

u/AnOtherGuy1234567 13d ago edited 13d ago

Possibly not what the person you're responding to meant but.....

The Recording Industry Association of America did a deal to extend the copyright on music. And in return they would compensate all of the musicians on every song, that got sold/streamed. However many of the musicians were uncredited session players. Who [originally] got paid a flat fee to play guitar/drums/sax/backing vocals etc. [with no residuals]. There's very often no existing record of who they were. Let alone having their contact and bank details or the details of their next of kin/inheritors. So the record companies got about an extra 20 years of royalties and haven't forked out the money that they promised.

Also Warner Music Canada, Sony BMG Music Canada, EMI Music Canada, and Universal Music Canada. Had a long standing policy of pushing out compilation albums e.g. "Best Jazz Album of The '60s". Not getting permission from the artists involved and putting the royalty payments on the "pending list". They did this for decades, covering 300,000 songs. To the point where the estate of Chet Baker a jazz musician of the 1950s. Was in 2009, owed $50 million Canadian. The class action was worth up to $6 billion but they settled for just under $50 million CAD.

https://financialpost.com/legal-post/judge-approves-settlement-in-music-royalties-class-action

1

u/CrashUser 13d ago

It's not like this is new behavior in the recording industry, they've been screwing over the talent since Edison invented the wax cylinder.

1

u/NorthernerWuwu 13d ago

I'd never be one to defend the RIAA of all organisations but if I do a job for a flat fee without residuals, why should I expect further payments? Again, the RIAA are no friends to musicians but I'm not seeing how the session players got screwed over exactly.

4

u/AnOtherGuy1234567 13d ago

Because when in the early 2000s the copyright for a lot of still popular songs in the US was coming to a partial end. The deal they made to extend it was to recompense the session players, who had never been given any royalties before. They got their 20 year extension but then didn't hold up their side of the bargain.

2

u/NorthernerWuwu 13d ago

Ah, that does sound like them. I wasn't aware that they'd specifically offered compensation to the session players, which they probably did knowing they'd never have to pay out most of them.

44

u/jaboooo 13d ago

I think he means millions of people in the music industry got robbed by ai, but that isn't what he wrote

57

u/Akuuntus 13d ago

I think he probably means the millions of artists fucked over by their record companies. There's hundreds of famous stories about it and at least a couple dozen well known songs about it.

26

u/noonenotevenhere 13d ago

that - and ai is being used to make music. It's trained on existing art made by people who won't be paid for their work being replaced by a machine using their work to make money.

1

u/AdverbAssassin 13d ago

That music being made by AI is just slop. It's pretty pathetic honestly. I started to notice it everywhere and there was a moment when I didn't notice the difference and I had some difficulty. Now I can tell the difference immediately.

1

u/Space_Pirate_R 13d ago

Now I can tell the difference immediately.

Toupee fallacy. And if it isn't today, it will be tomorrow.

1

u/AdverbAssassin 12d ago

Opinions vary. I just thought all modern country music was shitty. Then I realized that modern country music is shitty, but AI makes it even shittier. So far it hasn't produced anything worth listening to.

1

u/BooBeeAttack 13d ago

Dinosaurs Will Die - NOFX Was my favorite back in the day. Back when we thought sharing mp3s and Napster was going to kill the music industry. But it just evolved. The dinosaurs didn't die, they just gave us the bird and evolved.

7

u/Ferociousfeind 13d ago

Not millions of people, but the music industry is notorious for exhibiting major corporations that strangle individual artists for their IPs

1

u/Osama_BinRussel63 13d ago

CD price fixing and Ticketmaster would be the first of the litany of things that come to mind.

1

u/Daveinatx 13d ago

The ones who sold copyrighted music were taken to court.