Copyright and Its Implications for Artificial Intelligence

Technologist Albhy Galuten, publisher Abby North, law professor David Nimmer, author Jonathan Taplin, and general counsel & Associate Register of Copyrights, United States Copyright Office Suzy Wilson discuss the rapidly developing artificial intelligence technologies and the present and necessary future protections for artists under copyright laws. The conversation is moderated by SCL President Ashley Irwin.

PANELISTS

Albhy Galuten is a well-known American technology executive, futurist, inventor, Grammy Award-winning record producer, composer, musician, orchestrator, and conductor. He has produced 13 ‘number one’ singles with songs and albums selling over 100 million copies. He has been nominated for seven and won two Grammy Awards, a Dramalogue award, a BMI award, and is the recipient of multiple gold and platinum records.   As a Media & Technology Executive, Galuten was Vice President of New Technology at Ion where he invented and developed the enhanced CD (used and distributed by all major labels); Senior Vice President of Advanced Technology at Universal Music Group where he started and ran the music industry’s first technology division; and Vice President of Media Technology Strategy at Sony Corporation of America.   Currently, Galuten is Founder and CEO of Agora Media; Senior Fellow, Technology Initiatives at Intertrust Technologies and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.   As an inventor, Galuten is noted for having created and used the first drum loop for Saturday Night Fever (digital versions are used today in many thousands of recordings) and the Enhanced CD which was used and distributed by all the major labels. Galuten has 11 issued patents.

Abby North is the principal of North Music Group LLC and a founder of Unchained Melody Publishing LLC. North Music  Group represents over 100,000 musical works and sound recordings, including evergreen commercial and film/TV copyrights. North Music Group was created to work with families that control both composition and sound recording copyrights. These families wanted a boutique, trusted rights management partner who could advise regarding estate issues, copyright and terminations, and ways to generate new revenue.    While North’s catalog was born from these legacy copyrights, the expansion included current commercial works and sub-publishing of production music libraries.    To facilitate its rights management, North has developed technology for CWR creation, royalty processing, and music IP/metadata tracking.

David Nimmer is of counsel to Irell & Manella LLP in Los Angeles, CA. He also serves as a Professor from Practice at UCLA School of Law and a Distinguished Scholar at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology. He has lectured about copyright at law schools and symposia around the world (and in a variety of languages).  Since 1985, Prof. Nimmer has authored and updated Nimmer on Copyright, the standard reference treatise in the field, first published in 1963 by his late father, Professor Melville B. Nimmer. The U.S. Supreme Court has cited Nimmer on Copyright on numerous occasions, as has every federal appellate court, countless district and state courts, as well as courts confronting copyright cases in countries across the globe.

Jonathan Taplin’s extraordinary journey has put him at the crest of every major cultural wave in the past half-century: he was tour manager for Bob Dylan and the Band in the ’60s, producer of The Concert For Bangladesh and major films in the ’70s for Martin Scorsese, Wim Wenders and Gus Van Sant, an executive at Merrill Lynch’s Media Mergers and Acquisition Group in the ’80s, creator of the Internet’s first video-on-demand service in the ’90s, and a cultural critic and author writing about technology in the new millennium. He is the author of Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy, The Magic Years: Scenes From a Rock and Roll Life, and the forthcoming The End of Reality: How 4 Billionaires Are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars, and Crypto. His commentary has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Time Magazine, The Huffington Post, The Guardian, Medium, The Washington Monthly, and the Wall Street Journal. He is the Director Emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California and the Chairman of the Americana Music Foundation.

Suzanne “Suzy” Wilson is the General Counsel and Associate Register of Copyrights for the United States Copyright Office. She was appointed to the position effective January 31, 2022. Wilson is responsible for an extensive portfolio of regulatory, litigation, and policy matters. She provides legal guidance to the Office’s divisions, implements regulations governing the administration of the copyright system, advises congressional offices and other federal agencies, and develops legal positions in copyright litigation and other matters. Before joining the Office, and after clerking for the Honorable Warren J. Ferguson on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Wilson worked in private practice at leading law firms in Los Angeles. Most recently, for more than a decade, she was a partner at Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP, focusing on intellectual property litigation and counseling for internet and technology clients. While at the firm, she was recognized as one of the top intellectual property lawyers and one of the top women lawyers in California by the Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journal. She subsequently served as deputy general counsel for The Walt Disney Company, overseeing the company’s intellectual property and interactive and media legal functions, including a wide range of complex copyright issues involved in litigation, policy, and transactional work. Wilson also serves as a board member of a nonprofit legal services provider and co-chairs an advisory board for a nonprofit, nonpartisan youth voter registration organization. She earned a JD from Harvard Law School and an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley. Before attending law school, Wilson worked on Capitol Hill as a congressional staff member.

Emmy® award-winner Ashley Irwin has scored over 30 feature films, 300 hours of television and over 3,000 commercials. He relocated from his native Australia to the U.S.A. in 1990 after a successful career in theatre, records, advertising and television. He began his endless quest to understand the complexities of music licensing and associated contracts, as the in-house producer and A&R manager for an independent record label in Sydney, started his first publishing company in 1989 and currently maintains publishing entities at ASCAP, BMI and APRA.  In 1998 he was awarded Best Feature Film Score by the Australian Guild of Screen Composers for his score to the restored silent classic The White Hell of Piz Palü and the following year commissioned by the British Film Archives to write a new score to Alfred Hitchcock’s silent classic The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, in honor of the great director’s 100th anniversary. Both these films continue to be performed in film-live concerts throughout the world. In 2006, Ashley received a G.A.N.G. award for EA’s The Godfather video game, based on the Academy Award-winning film. Well-known for his collaborations with Oscar® winners Clint Eastwood and Bill Conti, Ashley has arranged and composed music for 23 Academy Awards shows, several Emmys® and Grammys®, as well as a slew of other TV variety shows. He was Musical Director for the inaugural Screen Actors Guild Awards and for the American Giving Awards, both for NBC. In 2015 Ashley recreated the songs of Peter Allen for the mini-series Peter Allen: Not the Boy Next Door and was nominated for both AACTA and APRA awards.  He is an official APRA-AMCOS Ambassador, is co-chair of Music Creators North America (MCNA), and is currently in his 5th term as President of the Society of Composers & Lyricists.