Tag: Artist Rights Symposium V

@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

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

Save the Date: Artist Rights Symposium V — October 19

The Artist Rights Institute and the University of Georgia School of Public Policy and International Affairs are pleased to announce Artist Rights Symposium V, to be held October 19, 2026, in Athens, Georgia at the School of Public Policy.

The fifth annual symposium will bring together artists, songwriters, musicians, academics, lawyers, policymakers, and other voices for a day of candid discussion about the rapidly changing legal, technological, and economic issues affecting creators.

The symposium will be moderated by David Lowery, Principal Lecturer in the Music Business Program at the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business and co-founder of the Artist Rights Institute. As in previous years, the emphasis will be on hearing directly from the people whose livelihoods and creative work are affected by these changes.

Panels and speakers will be announced soon.

For now, save the date: October 19, 2026 — Athens, Georgia.

by thetrichordist