Author: Trichordist Editor

Trichordist Editor

Fans Left Empty-Handed and Texas Attorney General Launches StubHub “Ghost Ticket” Investigation

For millions of soccer fans, attending a FIFA World Cup match is a dream. But for a growing number of ticket buyers, that dream has turned into a costly nightmare—and now the state of Texas is getting involved.

The Problem

It should come as a shock to no one that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has announced a formal investigation into StubHub over the massive number of fan complaints tied to 2026 FIFA World Cup ticket purchases. The only surprise in Paxton’s investigation is that it’s just him. Like so many other unfortunate ticket buyers before them, fans report that their tickets were either never delivered, canceled at the last minute, or were significantly inferior to what they originally paid for.

There is a fan class action case pending in New York federal court, but…The proposed class action filed by World Cup fans in the Southern District of New York will likely face an important threshold procedural issue before the merits are ever reached. As readers will recall from our coverage of the Kaiser v. StubHub case (also in SDNY), one issue to watch is whether StubHub seeks to enforce its online arbitration agreement and class-action waiver. Consumer platforms routinely invoke arbitration clauses to move disputes out of court and into individual proceedings, and StubHub may well attempt the same strategy here.

Whatever the outcome of the class action and StubHub’s challenges, that procedural defense is unavailable against a state enforcement action. A lawsuit brought by the Texas Attorney General under state consumer protection laws proceeds in court regardless of private arbitration agreements, potentially allowing public discovery, broader injunctive relief, and judicial scrutiny that individual consumer claims might never receive. This procedural distinction helps explain why state attorney general investigations can play a uniquely important role in policing mass-market online platforms, even when private class actions are already pending. And remember, Paxton has gotten over $1 billion from each of Google and Meta on privacy cases.

gov-uscourts-nysd-667473-1-0Download

At the heart of Paxton’s investigation is speculative ticketing aka “ghost tickets” — where sellers list tickets they don’t actually possess, collect payment, and then cancel orders when they can’t deliver or cover their promise to deliver tickets. This seedy practice is not new to readers and we’ve been harping on it for years.  According to Paxton’s press release, consumer complaints suggest this isn’t an isolated issue but a broader, systemic pattern.  Ya think?

“In many cases, attending a World Cup match is a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” Paxton said. “If StubHub is ghost ticketing Texans out of that experience, my office will use every tool available to hold them accountable and help fans who have been wronged.”

One Fan’s Story

Edgar Correa’s wife wanted to make his World Cup dream come true. She purchased tickets through StubHub on June 11 for the Bosnia-Switzerland match at Los Angeles Stadium on June 18. The couple booked a hotel, paid for parking, and Edgar took the day off work.

Then came the devastating message from StubHub: “Unfortunately, your order was not processed. This means the transaction was not completed and, therefore, no tickets were reserved for you.”

After scrambling, Correa managed to find replacement tickets directly through FIFA’s official platform—but they cost more and placed him at the very top of the stadium, far from the seats he’d originally paid for.

The Finger-Pointing

StubHub has blamed the cancellations on “transfer problems” tied to FIFA’s ticketing platform, stating that “the issues fans have experienced at this World Cup are largely due to performance failures in the event organizer’s own ticketing infrastructure, which has caused transfer errors across all resale platforms.”

FIFA isn’t having it. A spokesperson fired back: “The official FIFA ticketing platform for the FIFA World Cup 2026 operates reliably and at scale, as demonstrated by the more than 4.6 million spectators who have attended matches to date, with tickets purchased, delivered, resold, transferred, and successfully validated through FIFA systems.” FIFA explicitly rejected any suggestion that third-party platform failures are the result of its infrastructure.

The Industry Pushback

Paxton isn’t the only one sounding the alarm. On June 18—just days into the tournament—the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) and Fan Alliance sent a joint letter to congressional leadership demanding a federal ban on speculative ticket sales. The letter, signed by NIVA Executive Director (and ARS panelist) Stephen Parker and Fan Alliance Executive Director Donald Cohen, includes nearly two dozen exhibits documenting first-hand fan accounts of ghost ticketing (another name for spec tickets) from just the first week of the World Cup.

The groups have been warning about this exact scenario for years. As they wrote: “We warned that consumers would purchase tickets that did not exist. We warned that families would travel thousands of miles only to discover their tickets could not be delivered. We warned that refunds would not make consumers whole after airfare, hotels, rental cars, parking, and other travel expenses. Unfortunately, every one of those warnings has become a reality on the world’s biggest sporting stage.”

Their proposed fix is aggressive. They’re asking Congress to ban ghost ticketing outright, impose price gouging caps on resale, levy fines of at least $10,000 per listing per day, and require platforms like StubHub to disclose data on fulfillment rates, refunds, and consumer complaints—information the platforms have repeatedly declined to make public.

Notably, the letter takes direct aim at the TICKET Act currently before Congress, arguing it would still permit the very ghost ticketing that’s victimizing fans right now. The groups point to states like Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, Connecticut, and Nevada, which have already banned speculative sales and closed the loopholes that let resellers rebrand the practice as “concierge” or “ticket procurement” services (which also confused Colorado Governor Jared Polis when he vetoed a ban on spec ticking).

The letter also makes a point that often gets lost in the World Cup headlines: this same consumer harm plays out every day at independent venues, theaters, and comedy clubs across the country. Unlike FIFA or the NFL, these small businesses can’t absorb the reputational damage when fans blame the venue for a scalper’s fraud.

The Securities Question

One open question: StubHub is now a publicly traded company (NYSE: STUB) following its September 2025 IPO. If ghost ticketing cancellations represent a material volume of failed transactions—and the lawsuits and state investigations suggest they might—does StubHub face disclosure obligations around the scope of unfulfilled orders, pending litigation exposure, and potential regulatory liability? At least one investor rights firm has already flagged a lead plaintiff deadline tied to StubHub’s IPO disclosures, suggesting the securities angle may not be far behind the consumer protection one.

What You Can Do

If you purchased World Cup tickets through StubHub and didn’t receive them—or received tickets significantly different from what you paid for—the Texas Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division is encouraging you to file a complaint.

FIFA’s own FAQ is blunt: for any ticket sold through another platform, buyers must contact that platform directly. FIFA cannot access or manage those tickets. The organization recommends buying tickets only through its official site.  Well, it’s a little late for that.

The Takeaway

The 2026 World Cup has been a spectacular global event, but the secondary ticket market has exposed serious consumer protection gaps. Whether this is a case of ghost ticketing, platform infrastructure failures, or something in between, one thing is clear: fans are paying the price. With a state attorney general now on the case, StubHub may soon face real accountability for the broken promises left in its wake.

by Trichordist Editor

Yes, it really is a data center next to the Nashville Zoo

The proposal to build a massive data center adjacent to the Nashville Zoo raises a simple question: Have we completely lost our sense of priorities?

Nashville’s zoo exists to provide education, conservation, recreation, and a rare connection between people and animals. Families bring children to experience living animals, open space, and a respite from the relentless industrialization that increasingly consumes American communities. Yet now residents are being told that one of the city’s most treasured public assets should coexist with an industrial-scale computing facility whose primary purpose is to feed the endless demand for artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and speculative digital services. This is insane and it is exactly backward.

The burden of proof should not fall on citizens to explain why they do not want a hyperscale data center next to a zoo. The burden should fall on developers to explain why a project requiring enormous quantities of electricity, water, backup generation, transmission infrastructure, truck traffic, and round-the-clock industrial operations and both light and noise pollution belongs there in the first place.

The economic promises attached to these projects are increasingly difficult to take seriously as has been demonstrated by a recent study of data center job impact in Texas. Across the country, data center developers routinely advertise billions of dollars in investment while generating surprisingly few permanent jobs. Independent research has repeatedly found that many large data centers produce limited long-term employment relative to their physical footprint, utility demands, and public subsidies. Communities are often left with the costs while investors and distant technology companies capture the benefits.

Meanwhile, the impacts are immediate and local.

Residents face years of construction activity, noise, traffic, and visual blight. Wildlife habitats are disrupted. Open space disappears. Transmission lines, substations, backup generators, and supporting infrastructure permanently alter the character of surrounding neighborhoods. Once built, these facilities are effectively impossible to remove. They become permanent industrial fixtures.

The Nashville Zoo should not become collateral damage in the AI arms race.

Even more troubling is the uncertainty surrounding the long-term economics of artificial intelligence itself. Technology companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars based on forecasts that extend years into the future. Yet many of the underlying assumptions remain unproven. No one can say with confidence what demand for AI services will look like five, ten, or twenty years from now. If those forecasts prove wrong, communities could be left staring at the digital equivalent of abandoned factories—massive, energy-hungry facilities built for demand that never materialized.

The risk is not theoretical. Economists have a name for this phenomenon: stranded assets.

A zoo is a long-term civic investment. It creates educational, environmental, and cultural value that can endure for generations. A speculative AI data center is a bet on future demand forecasts generated in corporate boardrooms and venture-capital presentations.

When those two visions collide, the choice should not be difficult.

Nashville should protect its zoo, its surrounding communities, and its quality of life. There are countless locations better suited for industrial-scale computing infrastructure. A zoo is not one of them.

Some places should remain places for people, families, wildlife, and conservation. Not every acre of land needs to be sacrificed to the next technological gold rush.

The Nashville Zoo deserves better than becoming the neighbor of a machine. And believe me, if they’ll do it in Nashville they’ll do it anywhere. The Zoo has a Change.org petition you can sign if you agree.

by Trichordist Editor

@musicFIRST: Pass the American Music Fairness Act

For decades, AM/FM radio stations in the United States have paid songwriters and publishers when music is played on the air, but not the performers, musicians, producers, or record labels behind the sound recordings themselves.

The bipartisan American Music Fairness Act would finally close that loophole by requiring terrestrial radio broadcasters to pay artists for the use of their recordings — just like streaming services, satellite radio, and digital platforms already do. The bill also includes protections for small and local broadcasters and public radio.

Artists deserve to be paid when billion-dollar radio companies profit from their work. Please sign the letter here.

by Trichordist Editor

Know Your MLC: Highest Compensated Employees 2024 #TheReup

The MLC, Inc. has to disclose its “highest compensated” employees on its nonprofit Form 990 tax return for 2024. The Copyright Office has spent that last two years reviewing public comments on whether the MLC, Inc. should be renewed for another five years—that’s right, two of the five year renewal period. Maybe they forgot to let us know their decision? The party is obviously still going strong.

by Trichordist Editor

Kafka’s Hypothetical Market Strikes Again: The DSPs’ Latest Move to Silence Songwriters by Throwing GMR Out of Phonorecords V

If you want to understand how the streaming services really view songwriters, look no further than their joint motion to exclude Global Music Rights (GMR) from Phonorecords V. It is not subtle. It is not principled. It is an attempt to narrow the field to those voices the services already know how to manage. (All of these services are being investigated by the Texas Attorney General “over alleged payola schemes in which they accept bribes to artificially promote certain songs, artists, or content.”)

Services’ Joint Motion to Exclude GMR (For Filing)Download

The Services—Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Pandora, and Google—argue that GMR lacks a “significant interest” because it licenses performance rights rather than mechanical rights. That argument is technically obvious and substantively hollow, a mile wide and an inch deep, if that. GMR represents songwriters whose mechanical royalties are directly at issue in this proceeding. The idea that those songwriters somehow lose their “significant interest” because their representative also licenses performance rights is not just formalism. It is exclusion by design.

Let’s be clear about what is at stake. GMR affiliates include some of the most commercially significant songwriters in the world—writers like Drake, Bruno Mars, The Weeknd, Pharrell Williams, Nicki Minaj, Post Malone, Pearl Jam, Prince, and Tyler, the Creator. Nobody else in this proceeding speaks for them. Not the NMPA, which represents publishers. Not the services, who are adverse. And certainly not a system that already tilts toward the parties who can afford to litigate at scale.

When songwriters affiliated with Global Music Rights made a choice about how to license their work, they chose a free market model. They chose to be represented by GMR and to negotiate performance royalties directly with users, in arm’s-length, private negotiations reflecting real-world value. That decision matters. It reflects a preference for market pricing over regulatory pricing, and for merit over compulsion.

But the moment you shift from performance rights to mechanical rights, that choice disappears. Why?

Well, that’s a good question, but the answer for now is that under section 115 of the Copyright Act, those same songwriters are forced into a compulsory license regime administered in large part through the CRB which sets the rates. They cannot opt out. They cannot negotiate freely. Instead, their work is swept into a statutory system where rates are set through a complex, expensive, and heavily lawyered process that bears little resemblance to a functioning market. It is a hypothetical market.

So we end up in a strange place, a Kafkaesque place. The same songwriter who can negotiate directly for the public performance of their work is denied that freedom when it comes to the reproduction and distribution of that same work. One side of the market is competitive and arms length. The other is managed and hypothetical.

That is not a neutral design choice. It is a structural constraint—one that continues to shape outcomes in favor of the services.

The Services claim that GMR lacks a “direct financial interest” in the outcome. That is a remarkable position. The entire proceeding is about setting the value of musical works in streaming. If the rate goes down, songwriters get paid less. If the rate goes up, they get paid more. That is the definition of a direct financial interest. The Services’ attempt to redefine “direct” to exclude the very creators whose works are being priced is not statutory interpretation. It is outcome engineering.

The Services also argue that GMR’s interest is merely “indirect” or “attenuated.” This requires ignoring the bargaining power of the songwriters who effectively are GMR. But this is the same playbook the services have used for years: isolate each rights silo, then argue that no one outside the narrowest licensing box is entitled to speak. The result is a fragmented system where the only voices that remain are those structurally aligned with the services’ preferred outcome.

Then there is the efficiency argument—the Services’ claim that allowing GMR to participate would make the proceeding “lengthy, complex, and expensive.” As opposed to what? Nasty, brutish and short?

That would be more persuasive if it were not coming from the very companies that have turned CRB proceedings into multi-year, multi-million-dollar wars of attrition. These are the largest corporations in commercial history (at least one of which is an adjudicated monopoly) arguing that the problem is too many songwriters having a voice.

Let’s call this what it is: a coordinated effort by a handful of dominant platforms to use their collective market power—and their litigation budgets—to shape the CRB process in their favor. The same companies that work relentlessly to drive down the royalties paid to songwriters are now trying to limit who is allowed to advocate for those songwriters to get fair treatment in the first place.

And here is the practical reality the Services are ignoring: even if the Judges exclude GMR, they are not solving the problem. They are postponing it. When the decision is released for public comment, the absence of these voices will not go unnoticed. It will be exposed—and it will undermine the legitimacy of the outcome. Because they’ll be back for comments which will attack the entire proceeding as arbitrary.

The CRB process already leans heavily toward those who can afford to participate. That is a structural fact. But actively excluding a representative of major songwriters—on the theory that those songwriters do not have a “significant interest” in how their own royalties are set—crosses a different line.

The Judges should reject this motion out of hand.

Because if the people who write the songs do not have a seat at the table, then whatever this process is—it is not a willing buyer, willing seller marketplace. Excluding GMR would raise the question of whether it was ever intended to be one.

by Trichordist Editor

Inside Royalty Audits with Keith Bernstein: Lessons from Chris Castle’s Music Contracts & AI Class at UT Law

Let’s face it: Audit rights are only as good as your auditor.

In this ARI Artist Financial Education session—recorded for Chris Castle’s music business and AI class at the University of Texas School of Law—we got a gem. Keith Bernstein, one of the top royalty auditors in the music business, joins Chris for a practical discussion of DSP and royalty audits. As the force behind Royalty Review Council and Crunch Digital, and its proprietary clearance tool Tempo, Keith has spent decades uncovering how royalties are reported, misreported, and contested.

Keith walks us through how audits actually work, contract limitations on audit rights, where discrepancies tend to surface, and why leverage often matters more than contract language. After decades in the field, Keith has seen where the money goes and where it doesn’t. This conversation cuts through the theory and gets into how audits really work, where the gaps are, and why audit rights only matter if you can enforce them.

Watch the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cirxW12BS2k

Background reading: Donald S. Passman, All You Need to Know About the Music Business 11th Edition, 54–55, 70, 313, 408.

by Trichordist Editor

Say No to Suno

Late last year, thieves disguised as construction workers broke into the Louvre during broad daylight, grabbed more than $100 million worth of crown jewels, and roared off on their motorbikes into the busy streets of Paris. While some of those thieves were later arrested, the jewelry they stole has yet to be recovered, and many fear those historic works of artistry have already been recut, reset, and resold.

Closer to home, but no less nefarious, is the brazen rip-off of artists enabled by irresponsible AI, whose profiteers are recutting, remixing, and reselling original works of artistry as something new.  The hijacking of the world’s entire treasure-trove of music floods platforms with AI slop and dilutes the royalty pools of legitimate artists from whose music this slop is derived. 

Meanwhile, those who are promoting this new business model are operating in broad daylight, too – minus the yellow safety vests.  That is AI music company Suno, the brazen “smash and grab” platform whose “Make it Music” ad campaign suggests that the most personal and meaningful forms of music can now be fabricated by their unauthorized AI platform machinery trained on human artists’ work. 

How significant is this activity?  Publicly revealed data says Suno is used to generate 7 million tracks a day, a massive quantity that suggests a dominant market share of AI tracks.  According to recent reports, Deezer “deems 85% of streams of fully AI-generated tracks [on its service] to be fraudulent,” and that such tracks include outputs from major generative models.  As JP Morgan’s analysts said, Deezer’s data “should be indicative of the broader market.”  Suno has yet to demonstrate persuasively that its platform does not, in practice, serve as a scalable input into streaming-fraud schemes — raising a serious concern that Suno has, in effect, become a fraud-fodder factory on an industrial scale.

In a February 2 LinkedIn post, Paul Sinclair, Suno’s Chief Music Officer, claims that his company’s platform is about “empowerment” that enables “billions of fans to create and play with music.”  He argues that closed systems are “walled gardens” that deny people access to the full joy of music.

Ironically, Sinclair’s choice of analogy undermines his own argument.  Ask yourself: just why are most gardens surrounded by fences or walls?  To keep out rabbits, deer, raccoons and wild pigs seeking a free lunch.  We cultivate, nurture and protect our gardens precisely because that makes them much more productive over the long run.

While Sinclair may be loath to admit it, AI is fundamentally different from past disruptive innovations in the music industry.  The phonograph, cassettes, CDs, MP3s, downloads, streaming – all these technologies were about the reproduction and distribution of creative work.  By contrast, irresponsible AI like Suno appropriates and plunders such creative work while undermining the commercial ecosystem for artists.

Think back to the days of Napster.  What brought the music industry back from the ruinous abyss of unfettered digital piracy?  It was the very “closed systems” that Sinclair derides as exclusionary.  At least streaming platforms maintain access controls and content management systems that enable creator compensation, even if the economic outcomes for many creators remain inadequate.  Should we be against Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, YouTube Music, and Amazon Music?  What about Netflix, Disney+ and HBO, too, while we’re at it?

At its core, Sinclair’s argument is just a tired remix of the old trope that “information wants to be free.”  What that really means is: “We want your music for free.”

Artists need to understand Suno’s game.  They are not putting technology in the service of artists; they are putting artists in the service of their technology.  Every time artists’ creations are used by the platform, those creations have just unwittingly been contributed to the creation of endless derivatives of artists’ own work, not to mention AI slop, with limited or no remuneration back to the human creators.  Suno built its business on our backs, scraping the world’s cultural output without permission, then competing against the very works exploited.

It’s also important to keep in mind that using Suno to generate audio output calls into question the copyrightability of whatever Suno creates.  Most countries around the world including the US Copyright Office have been clear that generative AI outputs are largely ineligible for a copyright – meaning the economic value of the Suno creation lies solely with Suno, not with the artist using it.  The only ones gaining empowerment from Suno are Suno themselves.

Many in our community are embracing responsible AI as a tool for creation, and as a means for fans to explore and interact with our artistry.  That’s wonderful.  But it’s not the same as creating an environment where AI-generated works sourced from our music are mass distributed to dilute our royalties or, worse yet, reward those actively seeking to commit fraud.  Artists need to know the difference – all AI platforms are not the same, and Suno, which is being sued for copyright infringement, is not a platform artists should trust.

Responsible AI-generated music must evolve within a framework that respects and remunerates artists, enhances human creativity rather than supplants it, and empowers fans to engage with the music they love.  At the same time, AI services must preclude mass distribution of slop and prevent fraudsters from destroying the very ecosystem that has been built to reward and sustain artists and audiences alike.

All of us, including billions of music fans, share an urgent, deep and abiding interest in protecting and rewarding human genius, even as AI continues to change our industry and the world in unimaginable ways.  So in 2026, even as the Louvre continues to revamp its own approach to security, we in the arts must rise to confront those who would “smash-and-grab” our creativity for their own benefit.

Together, while embracing innovation, we must work to establish more effective safeguards – both legal and technological – that better promote and protect all creative artists, our intellectual property, and the spark of human genius.

Say no to Suno. Say yes to the beauty and bounty of the gardens that feed us all.

Signed: 

Ron Gubitz, Executive Director, Music Artist Coalition

Helienne Lindvall, Songwriter and President, European Composer and Songwriter Alliance

David C. Lowery, Artist and Editor The Trichordist

Tift Merritt artist, Practitioner in Residence, Duke University and Artist Rights Alliance Board Member

Blake Morgan, artist, producer, and President of ECR Music Group.

Abby North, President, North Music Group

Chris Castle, Artist Rights Institute

by Trichordist Editor

@ArtistRights Institute Newsletter 01/05/26: Grok Can’t Control Itself, CRB V Starts, Data Center Rebellion, Sarah Wynn-Williams Senate Testimony, Copyright Review

Artist Rights Institute logo - Artist Rights Weekly newsletter

Phonorecords V Commencement Notice: Government setting song mechanical royalty rates

The Copyright Royalty Judges announce the commencement of a proceeding to determine reasonable rates and terms for making and distributing phonorecords for the period beginning January 1, 2028, and ending December 31, 2032. Parties wishing to participate in the rate determination proceeding must file their Petition to Participate and the accompanying $150 filing fee no later than 11:59 p.m. eastern time on January 30, 2026. Deets here.

US Mechanical Rate Increase

Songwriters Will Get Paid More for Streaming Royalties Starting Today (Erinn Callahan/AmericanSongwriter)

CRB Sets 2026 Mechanical Rate at 13.1¢ (Chris Castle/MusicTechPolicy)

Spotify’s Hack by Anna’s Archive

No news. Biggest music hack in history still stolen.

MLC Redesignation

The MMA’s Unconstitutional Unclaimed Property Preemption: How Congress Handed Protections to Privatize Escheatment (Chris Castle/MusicTechPolicy)

Under the Radar: Data Center Grass Roots Rebellion

Data Center Rebellion (Chris Castle/MusicTechSolutions)

The Data Center Rebellion is Here and It’s Reshaping the Political Landscape (Washington Post)

Residents protest high-voltage power lines that could skirt Dinosaur Valley State Park (ALEJANDRA MARTINEZ AND PAUL COBLER/Texas Tribune)

US Communities Halt $64B Data Center Expansions Amid Backlash (Lucas Greene/WebProNews)

Big Tech’s fast-expanding plans for data centers are running into stiff community opposition (Marc Levy/Associated Press)

Data center ‘gold rush’ pits local officials’ hunt for new revenue against residents’ concerns (Alander Rocha/Georgia Record)

AI Policy

Meet the New AI Boss, Worse Than the Old Internet Boss (Chris Castle/MusicTechPolicy)

Deloitte’s AI Nightmare: Top Global Firm Caught Using AI-Fabricated Sources to Support its Policy Recommendations (Hugh Stephens/Hugh Stephens Blog)

Grok Can’t Stop AI Exploitation of Women

Facebook/Meta Whistleblower Testifies at US Senate

Copyright Case 2025 Review

Year in Review: The U.S. Copyright Office (George Thuronyi/Library of Congress)

Copyright Cases: 2025 Year in Review (Rachel Kim/Copyright Alliance)

AI copyright battles enter pivotal year as US courts weigh fair use (Blake Brittain/Reuters)

by Trichordist Editor

What Don Draper Knew That AI Forgot: Authorship, Ownership, and Advertising

David is pointing to a quiet but serious problem hiding behind the rush to use generative AI in advertising, film, and television: copyright law protects authorship, not outputs. AI muddies or even erases authorship altogether in some cases

Under current U.S. Copyright Office guidance, works generated primarily by AI are often not registrable in the Copyright Office because they lack a human author exercising creative control. That means a brand that relies on AI to generate a commercial may not actually own exclusive rights in the finished work. If someone copies, remixes, or repurposes that ad, even in a way that damages the brand, the company may have little or no legal recourse under copyright law.

The Copyright Office guidance says:

In the Office’s view, it is well-established that copyright can protect only material that is the product of human creativity. Most fundamentally, the term “author,” which is used in both the Constitution and the Copyright Act, excludes non-humans. The Office’s registration policies and regulations reflect statutory and judicial guidance on this issue….If a work’s traditional elements of authorship were produced by a machine, the work lacks human authorship and the Office will not register it For example, when an AI technology receives solely a prompt from a human and produces complex written, visual, or musical works in response, the “traditional elements of authorship” are determined and executed by the technology—not the human user

David has not identified a theoretical risk. Copyright is the backbone of brand control in media. It’s what allows companies to stop misuse, dilution, parody-turned-weapon, or hostile appropriation. In the US, a copyright registration is required to protect those rights. Remove that protection, and brands are left relying on weaker tools like trademark or unfair competition law, which are narrower, slower, and often ill-suited to digital remix culture.

David’s warning extends beyond ads. Film and TV studios experimenting with AI-generated scripts, scenes, music, or visuals may be undermining their own ability to control, license, or defend those works. In trying to save money upfront, they may be giving up the legal leverage that protects their brand, reputation, and long-term value.

by Trichordist Editor

The Word “If” is for Losers: Gene Simmons Nails It on American Music Fairness Act

Senator Marsha Blackburn and Gene Simmons testified today at the Senate Judiciary Committee on fixing artist pay for radio play with the American Music Fairness Act—both knocked it out of the park. As Senator Blackburn said very clearly, corporate radio wants to be treated as a special and protected class for no good reason. As she said, the creative community has waited a very long time for fair treatment.

Now Gene Simmons…lived up to his billing. Absolutely charming and emphatic about driving AMFA through the tape. Has to be seen to be believed and absolutely electrifying. As he said, artists need radio and radio needs artists. “Let’s get with it” NAB.

You can watch the entire hearing above or Gene’s written testimony and highlight reel below.

2025-12-09-pm_testimony_simmonsDownload
by Trichordist Editor