Tag: Artist Rights Institute

@ArtistRights Symposium 5 Panel: Beware the AI Opt-In: Hidden Right of Publicity Waivers

Registration is open for Artist Rights Symposium 5 at Eventbrite!

The Artist Rights Symposium 5 is coming on October 19 at Tweed Recording in Athens, GA hosted by the University of Georgia Terry College of Business Music Certificate Program and the School of Policy and International Affairs, and the Artist Rights Institute. More about the Symposium here and register on Eventbrite here.

As AI companies like Suno and Udio settle copyright lawsuits with record companies and music publishers, they introduce new licensing arrangements. Artists and songwriters may be offered the “opportunity” to “opt in” to the settlements and “new revenue streams”. But not all revenue streams are equal, remember streaming? Remember “Let’s help that plucky startup Spotify”? We have seen this movie before and we know how it ends.

Why a Suno Copyright Settlement Is Different from Spotify, LimeWire—or Even Bartz

The music industry has settled copyright infringement disputes before. Spotify’s mechanical royalty settlements in David Lowery’s class action resolved claims over unpaid or improperly licensed compositions. LimeWire’s settlement addressed unauthorized reproduction and distribution of copyrighted recordings. In both cases, the essential bargain concerned compensation for past copyright infringement, not permission to reproduce the identity of the human beings who created the music. Identity theft never came up.

Suno presents a fundamentally different problem. Its generative AI technology can potentially reproduce not merely copyrighted expression but recognizable characteristics of an artist’s voice, performance and identity—what Chris has called  personhood signals. A settlement that licenses recordings for future training may therefore implicate rights that neither the record company nor publisher controls. That’s why they need the “opt in” agreement to waive these rights because the AI platform doesn’t want to pay for the artist’s identify if the artist would even consider that deal. Many artists and songwriters, if not most, will not.

The Bartz v. Anthropic settlement illustrates the limitation of treating AI disputes exclusively as copyright cases. Bartzcompensates copyright owners for specified historical conduct involving pirated books. It settles the claims brought in litigation, so does not expressly resolve the separate problem of extracting and commercializing human identity. That is what a conventional copyright settlement misses.

Settling infringement of the work does not settle exploitation of the person. And no copyright settlement should quietly become consent to commercialize someone’s voice, identity or personhood.

So artists, their managers and lawyers are asking, what exactly are we being asked to agree to this time? Before you even get to the “new revenue stream,” an opt-in for an apparent copyright settlement may also include permission for future AI training, broad releases, perpetual covenants not to sue, or waivers of an artist’s rights in their name, voice and identity. These are fundamentally different transactions, with potentially permanent consequences. Before signing, creators need to understand not only what they will be paid, but what rights they are surrendering, how those rights may be exploited, and whether they can ever get them back.

Meet the Panelists

Chris Castle will lead the closing panel at Artist Rights Symposium 5, that warns “Beware the AI Opt-In: Hidden Right of Publicity Waivers.” The panel brings together four speakers with complementary perspectives on artist advocacy, litigation and music-industry licensing.

Jen Jacobsen, Artist Rights Alliance.  Friend of the show Jen Jacobsen is a long time artist rights advocate who brings the artist-advocacy perspective, focusing on meaningful consent, transparency and protecting musicians from agreements that may surrender irreversible grants of rights with hidden waivers.

George Zelcs of Korein Tillery.  George Zelcs is the lead counsel on the Jason Isbell/David Lowery personhood class action against Suno to help us understand the implications of “opt in” agreements with waivers on rights of publicity and the practical question of what remedies artists should retain.

Gwendolyn Seale — Gwen Seale PLLC.  Gwen brings experience representing songwriters and music copyright owners, with particular relevance to licensing authority, co-writer and co-owner interests, compensation and contractual protections.

Tim Kappel — Wells Kappel.  Tim is a copyright expert and artist rights advocate who successfully argued in federal trial court and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that his client Cyril Vetter should retain foreign rights as part of a statutory copyright termination— a case now before the U.S. Supreme Court. 

The panel is scheduled for 3:00–4:00 p.m. on October 19. 

Three Deals Disguised as One?

An AI opt-in may combine three distinct transactions as part of the copyright settlement and go-forward license: compensation for past unauthorized uses (probably not shared by the label, but check), licensing for future model training, and revenue sharing from products built on those models (but don’t hold your breath). But accepting settlement compensation for yesterday’s conduct should not automatically mean consenting to tomorrow’s exploitation. 

There may also be a fourth transaction: authorization to use an artist’s name, voice, likeness or other personhood rights which could not have been brought by a record company or music publisher because they do not control those rights.

A copyright license is not permission to commercialize personhood.

The panel will examine how these rights can become entangled, particularly when record companies, publishers or other representatives may not control all the rights an AI company seeks.

What Happens After You Sign?

The panel will address the questions that can be overlooked when attention focuses on the size of a settlement or the promise of future royalties.

What exactly is inside the AI company’s “walled garden”? How are revenues attributed to particular recordings or compositions? Can users generate synthetic voices or prompt an artist’s name? Can artists examine the product before consenting? 

And what happens when an artist wants out later when the term expires (if there is a term)? Deleting a source recording does not necessarily remove its influence from an already-trained model. Termination, machine unlearning, continuing model exploitation and rights that survive expiration may determine whether an opt-in becomes a one-way door in an AI Hotel California.

Register for Artist Rights Symposium V on Eventbrite

Related reading: The AI “License” That Isn’t: A Musician’s Checklist for Spotting a Covenant Not to Sue Censorship Trap in Disguise.

by thetrichordist

@ArtistRights Symposium 5 Panel: In Our Own Backyard: Data Centers, AI Infrastructure, and the Creative Communities That Pay the Price

Registration is open for Artist Rights Symposium V at Eventbrite!

The Artist Rights Symposium V is coming on October 19 at Tweed Recording in Athens, GA hosted by the University of Georgia Terry College of Business Music Certificate Program and the School of Policy and International Affairs, and the Artist Rights Institute. More about the Symposium here and register on Eventbrite here. We’ll be posting panel overviews to introduce you to the speakers, this post is about the connection between data center opposition and artist rights.

When AI Comes for Your Dreams

Artificial intelligence is usually presented as something almost immaterial: software in the cloud, trained on data, producing an answer, an image or a song at the push of a button. But there is nothing immaterial about the massive physical infrastructure behind it.

Does somebody else’s need for your property give them the right to take it?

That is the connection we’ll explore at Artist Rights Symposium V with Ansley Brown; Georgia State Senator Sonya Halpern; and Dr. Moiya McTier of the Human Artistry Campaign and Moderator Chris Castle of Artist Rights Institute—bringing together community, public-policy and artist-rights perspectives on different sides of the same extraordinary AI buildout.

The panel highlights the increasingly important connection between data center protests and artist rights, bringing together leading human-creator advocates with a prominent Georgia community advocate whose family home was taken for data centers.

The panel will examine how AI not only depends on scraping vast swaths of human culture, but also requires enormous data centers, staggering amounts of electricity and water, sprawling new transmission infrastructure—real land in real communities. Someone bears the costs when family farms, homes and intellectual property become inputs to the AI economy.

Readers of the Data Center Backlash SITREP will remember Ansley Brown and her family’s fight in Coweta County, Georgia, where a proposed hyperscale data-center development brought AI’s extraordinary power demands quite literally to her doorstep—including Georgia Power’s effort to use eminent domain to take her family home for data center transmission lines.

Ansley did not set out to become a public advocate. She became one because a multibillion-dollar development threatened something deeply personal: the home and life her family had built in Coweta County, Georgia.

But Ansley’s story is also the story of thousands like her across America—and, indeed, around the world—as communities confront unprecedented demands for land, electricity, water and transmission capacity to support the accelerating AI buildout. At the same time, creators are watching their works appropriated by AI platforms that flood the attention economy with AI-generated content that competes directly with the human works used to build those systems.

Who bears the cost when someone else’s dream is reduced to an input for AI?

Artists have been asking essentially the same question—whether they’re protesting data centers next to the Nashville Zoo or suing to protect their works and personhood from unauthorized AI exploitation. Songwriters, recording artists, musicians, actors, writers and other creators have watched their work become an input into enormously valuable AI systems—without consent or compensation, if there even is a price for taking their dreams.

The AI economy has both i nputs and infrastructure. It needs creative works to build its products, and it needs land, power and water to run them. The legal issues are different, but the underlying question is remarkably similar: Ansley has described the human consequence in memorable terms: having to take the dream you built in one place and try to recreate it somewhere else—somewhere you hope will be safe from the next wave of AI development.

A family home and an artist’s life’s work are very different kinds of property. But neither becomes free for the taking merely because somebody else needs it to build a business.

What happens when the price of somebody else’s technological dream is that you have to surrender your own?

That’s the discussion we’re bringing to Athens on October 19 at Artist Rights Symposium V.  Registration is open at Eventbrite!

by thetrichordist

@ArtistRights Symposium 5 Panelists: Ghost Busters: Fighting Back Against Speculative Tickets

Registration is open for Artist Rights Symposium V at Eventbrite!

The Artist Rights Symposium V is coming on October 19 at Tweed Recording in Athens, GA hosted by the University of Georgia Terry College of Business Music Certificate Program and the School of Policy and International Affairs, and the Artist Rights Institute. More about the Symposium here and register on Eventbrite here.

We’ll be posting panel overviews to introduce you to the speakers, starting with the ticketing panel. From nonexistent World Cup tickets to a growing state-by-state push for resale reform, the ticketing debate is moving quickly. “Ghost Busters: How Fans, Artists, and Venues Are Fighting Back Against Speculative Tickets” will examine what artists, venues and lawmakers can do about ghost tickets, predatory resale and a secondary market increasingly disconnected from the artists who create the event. 

The panel begins at 11:30 a.m. on October 19 at Tweed Recording with these experts: 

Randy Nichols, a board member of the National Independent Talent Organization, leads NITO research and policy efforts addressing predatory resale practices. A longtime artist manager and entrepreneur, his advocacy draws on two decades of experience in the live-music business.

Jay Gilbert, co-founder of Label Logic and co-host of Your Morning Coffee, brings decades of music-industry experience, including executive roles with Universal, Sony and Warner and marketing campaigns for artists ranging from Nirvana and The Police to Bob Marley and Johnny Cash.

Moderating is Mala Sharma, co-founder and president of Georgia Music Partners, whose career spans record labels, artist management, entertainment banking, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and public policy.

The conversation:  Who should control a ticket after it goes on sale—and how do we stop people from selling tickets they never owned in the first place?

by Trichordist Editor

Gwen Seale Discusses the Streaming Mechanicals Panel at Artist Rights Symposium 5

In this short video, Gwendolyn Seale and Artist Rights Institute Director Chris Castle preview “The 39 Steps,” a Symposium V panel asking whether Section 115’s complex streaming mechanical formula should give way to a fixed per-stream penny rate with a COLA.

Gwen joins fellow attorneys Tim Kappel and Shannon Sorensen—all three represent clients before the Copyright Royalty Board in Phonorecords V.  ARI Director and UGA professor David C. Lowery moderates. David teaches at the Terry College of Business Music Certificate program. He led the class action against Spotify over nonpayment of streaming mechanical royalties and is a class representative in the Isbell v. Suno class action.

Join us October 19, 2026, at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, for Artist Rights Symposium V hosted by Terry College of Business and the UGA School of Policy and International Affairs.

Symposium information and registration

by Trichordist Editor

UGA School of Public and International Affairs Joins Artist Rights Symposium V

We’re pleased to announce that the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs has joined the Artist Rights Institute and UGA’s Music Business Certificate Program at Terry College as a sponsor of the fifth annual Artist Rights Symposium, October 19, 2026, in Athens, Georgia.

The addition of SPIA is especially timely. This year’s Symposium reaches beyond traditional music-industry issues to examine the broader public-policy consequences of artificial intelligence—from the massive data centers, energy infrastructure, and local communities supporting AI development to the legal and policy questions surrounding artist consent, identity, compensation, and the use of creative work.

Bringing together music business, law, public policy, artists, advocates, and policymakers is exactly what this moment requires.

Artist Rights Symposium V
October 19, 2026 — Athens, Georgia
Speakers and additional program details coming soon.

by trichordist

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

Don’t forget tomorrow—Artist Rights Roundtable on AI and Copyright at American University in Washington DC

Artist Rights Roundtable on AI and Copyright: 
Coffee with Humans and the Machines     

Join the Artist Rights Institute (ARI) and American University’s Kogod’s Entertainment Business Program for a timely morning roundtable on AI and copyright from the artist’s perspective. We’ll explore how emerging artificial intelligence technologies challenge authorship, licensing, and the creative economy — and what courts, lawmakers, and creators are doing in response.

This roundtable is particularly timely because both the Bartz and Kadrey rulings expose gaps in author consent, provenance, and fair licensing, underscoring an urgent need for policy, identifiers, and enforceable frameworks to protect creators.

 🗓️ Date: September 18, 2025
🕗 Time: 8:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon
📍 Location: Butler Board Room, Bender Arena, American University, 4400 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington D.C. 20016

🎟️ Admission: Free and open to the public. Registration required at Eventbrite. Seating is limited.

🅿️ Parking map is available here. Pay-As-You-Go parking is available in hourly or daily increments ($2/hour, or $16/day) using the pay stations in the elevator lobbies of Katzen Arts Center, East Campus Surface Lot, the Spring Valley Building, Washington College of Law, and the School of International Service

Hosted by the Artist Rights Institute & American University’s Kogod School of Business, Entertainment Business Program

🔹 Overview:

☕ Coffee served starting at 8:00 a.m.
🧠 Program begins at 8:50 a.m.
🕛 Concludes by 12:00 noon — you’ll be free to have lunch with your clone.

🗂️ Program:

8:00–8:50 a.m. – Registration and Coffee

8:50–9:00 a.m. – Introductory Remarks by KOGOD Dean David Marchick and ARI Director Chris Castle

9:00–10:00 a.m. – Topic 1: AI Provenance Is the Cornerstone of Legitimate AI Licensing:

Speakers:

  • Dr. Moiya McTier, Senior Advisor, Human Artistry Campaign
  • Ryan Lehnning, Assistant General Counsel, International at SoundExchange
  • The Chatbot

Moderator: Chris Castle, Artist Rights Institute

10:10–10:30 a.m. – Briefing: Current AI Litigation

  • Speaker: Kevin Madigan, Senior Vice President, Policy and Government Affairs, Copyright Alliance

10:30–11:30 a.m. – Topic 2: Ask the AI: Can Integrity and Innovation Survive Without Artist Consent?

Speakers:

  • Erin McAnally, Executive Director, Songwriters of North America
  • Jen Jacobsen, Executive Director, Artist Rights Alliance
  • Josh Hurvitz, Partner, NVG and Head of Advocacy for A2IM
  • Kevin Amer, Chief Legal Officer, The Authors Guild

Moderator: Linda Bloss-Baum, Director, Business and Entertainment Program, KOGOD School of Business

11:40–12:00 p.m. – Briefing: US and International AI Legislation

  • Speaker: George York, SVP, International Policy Recording Industry Association of America

🎟️ Admission:

Free and open to the public. Registration required at Eventbrite. Seating is limited.

🔗 Stay Updated:

Watch this space and visit Eventbrite for updates and speaker announcements.

by Trichordist

Artist Rights Institute and Abby North Press Copyright Office for Accountability in MLC Redesignation

On August 22, 2025, the Artist Rights Institute, together with music publisher Abby North, filed joint comments with the U.S. Copyright Office as part of the agency’s ongoing five-year redesignation review of the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC). The comments memorialize an ex parte meeting with senior Copyright Office attorneys and stress that this redesignation process must not become a perfunctory exercise. Instead, it should serve as a meaningful opportunity to hold the MLC accountable for its statutory obligations.

The filing underscores that Congress deliberately gave the Copyright Office broad regulatory oversight because the MLC was established as an experiment under the Music Modernization Act. After five years, the evidence points to serious deficiencies: continuing metadata errors, lack of access to bulk matching tools for rightsholders, opaque governance decisions, and unresolved questions about audits and litigation. Most strikingly, the MLC’s unilateral investment of unmatched royalties in the securities markets—totaling more than $1.2 billion on the MLC’s latest tax return—raises concerns about statutory authority and fiduciary duties.

The joint comments argue that interest on unmatched royalties was intended by Congress as a penalty on licensees for failure to timely match and pay, not as a windfall for the MLC itself. By adopting an unauthorized investment policy, the MLC risks stepping outside its mandate, exposing its officers and directors to fiduciary liability.

To restore transparency and trust, the Institute and Ms. North propose clear regulatory reforms: conditional redesignation tied to performance benchmarks, publication of vendor match rates, real-time disclosure of governance actions, clarified metadata responsibilities, and monthly reporting of investment holdings. These reforms would align the U.S. system with international best practices and protect songwriters whose livelihoods depend on fair and accurate royalty distributions.

Read the full joint comments below.

Artist-Rights-Institute-to-USCO-1-Aug-22-2025Download
by thetrichordist

9/18/25: Save the Date! @ArtistRights Institute and American University Kogod School to host Artist Rights Roundtable on AI and Copyright Sept. 18 in Washington, DC

🎙️ Artist Rights Roundtable on AI and Copyright:  Coffee with Humans and the Machines            

📍 Butler Board Room, Bender Arena, American University, 4400 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington D.C. 20016 | 🗓️ September 18, 2025 | 🕗 8:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon

Hosted by the Artist Rights Institute & American University’s Kogod School of Business, Entertainment Business Program

🔹 Overview:

Join the Artist Rights Institute (ARI) and Kogod’s Entertainment Business Program for a timely morning roundtable on AI and copyright from the artist’s perspective. We’ll explore how emerging artificial intelligence technologies challenge authorship, licensing, and the creative economy — and what courts, lawmakers, and creators are doing in response.

☕ Coffee served starting at 8:00 a.m.
🧠 Program begins at 8:50 a.m.
🕛 Concludes by 12:00 noon — you’ll be free to have lunch with your clone.

🗂️ Program:

8:00–8:50 a.m. – Registration and Coffee

8:50–9:00 a.m. – Introductory Remarks by Dean David Marchick and ARI Director Chris Castle

9:00–10:00 a.m. – Topic 1: AI Provenance Is the Cornerstone of Legitimate AI Licensing:

Speakers:
Dr. Moiya McTier Human Artistry Campaign
Ryan Lehnning, Assistant General Counsel, International at SoundExchange
The Chatbot
Moderator Chris Castle, Artist Rights Institute

10:10–10:30 a.m. – Briefing: Current AI Litigation, Kevin Madigan, Senior Vice President, Policy and Government Affairs, Copyright Alliance

10:30–11:30 a.m. – Topic 2: Ask the AI: Can Integrity and Innovation Survive Without Artist Consent?

Speakers:
Erin McAnally, Executive Director, Songwriters of North America
Dr. Richard James Burgess, CEO A2IM
Dr. David C. Lowery, Terry College of Business, University of Georgia.

Moderator: Linda Bloss Baum, Director Business and Entertainment Program, Kogod School of Business

11:40–12:00 p.m. – Briefing: US and International AI Legislation

🎟️ Admission:

Free and open to the public. Registration required at Eventbrite. Seating is limited.

🔗 Stay Updated:

Watch Eventbrite, this space and visit ArtistRightsInstitute.org for updates and speaker announcements.

by Trichordist Editor