this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2025
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464
German court: ChatGPT violated copyright law by ‘learning’ from song lyrics (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 23 hours ago by kalkulat@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
26 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

"The collecting society GEMA, which manages the rights of composers, lyricists and music publishers and has approximately 100,000 members, filed the case against OpenAI in November 2024."

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[–] termaxima@slrpnk.net 6 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

I have been thinking of adding a license clause to everything I make (code especially) that makes any AI trained on it my sole exclusive property, but I don't know how defensible that would be in court ?

Or any other sort of trap clause. But again, I don't know how to word it. Like "this makes your model public domain" or "you grant a free worldwide unlimited license to every human on earth".

Something that makes the mere inclusion of the code in a training data set into absolute legal poison to the would-be owners.

I am not a lawyer, not even slightly...

[–] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 57 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I mean every German who ever heard of GEMA knew this was inevitable all the way back in 2022. They threatened entire cities to the point some of them don‘t play music on Christmas markets anymore. You can‘t win against those guys, just hope for a hefty settlement.

[–] slevinkelevra@sh.itjust.works 15 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (2 children)

GEMA is so bizarre. If you're a musician and composer and want to do a live concert that consists only of songs written by you and there is an entrence fee, you'll basically have to give them all of said fee or even more. They are destroying any culture really, only to give the money to some of the most successful musicians. And that even if you yourself are not part of GEMA, so don't get ANYTHING in return.

[–] Vintor@retrolemmy.com 32 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

All of that is incorrect.

You can check the GEMA fees here: https://www.gema.de/portal/app/tarifrechner/preisrechner - I had it calculate the fees for a 4-hour concert with 100 seats and an entrance fee of 5 Euros, and the total GEMA fee is 31,35 €. If all seats are filled, that is less than 10% of your income. Certainly a lot of money, but a far cry from "all of said fee or even more".

Secondly, if you are not a GEMA member and all the music you play is non-GEMA (and written by yourself), you don't have to pay anything, see here for example: https://www.anwalt.de/rechtstipps/gema (central quote: "Der GEMA-Pflicht unterliegen dabei alle Musikwerke, für die sie die Verwertungsrechte erhalten hat", translation: "GEMA liability applies to all musical works for which it has received exploitation rights.")

I don't like the GEMA either, but let's stay with the verifiable facts, please.

[–] General_Effort@lemmy.world 0 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

GEMA's social media game is certainly top. Nice to see the money being put to good use.

If all seats are filled,

Sure. Everyone's Taylor Swift. Let's just assume that.

The actual truth is that if you do not play GEMA music, you have to provide evidence of that to GEMA. Young musicians who foolishly reason that they don't have anything to do with GEMA will be dragged through court.

[–] Vintor@retrolemmy.com 10 points 9 hours ago

sigh If more than 7 seats out of 100 are filled, you will make a profit. Happier?

I'm not going to comment on your second paragraph, since it doesn't contradict what I wrote. And if I were a GEMA shill, I probably wouldn't provide links for my claims, but you do you.

[–] General_Effort@lemmy.world -1 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

GEMA was created by the Nazis to take over pop culture. There's a certain logic there.

Of course, under the Nazis you could be sent to camp if you belonged to the wrong subculture. So there is a difference. The rebels of the time listened to jazz, to swing. "Negro music" was the social media of that age, corrupting the youth.

[–] sns@lemmy.dbzer0.com 29 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

I think "ingesting" is more accurate than "learning".

[–] Strider@lemmy.world 4 points 7 hours ago

Illegaly ingesting. I hate it that private people are fined when they look wrong at a minor hash of a snippet of data but when a corporation does it in full and monetizes it, it's fine!

[–] jmbreuer@lemmy.ml 15 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

How is it an "undisclosed [amount of] damages" - aren't court rulings supposed to be public [records]?

I know stuff like the rulings of me going to court with the driver and insurance companies involved in a car accident certainly was public (in Germany).

Anyone in the know please ELI5 and/or point me at the relevant laws, how/what/in which cases (parts of) rulings can be "undisclosed".

[–] NiHaDuncan@lemmy.world 9 points 17 hours ago

Settlements can go undisclosed by agreement of the parties involved. Civil court is different from criminal; the former is for the benefit of interested parties, the latter is for the benefit of the public at large. Criminal courts can do some things behind closed doors as well but that usually requires a need of the state (such as protection of a judge, jury, state, etc.)

This is assuming a legal system similar to that in OPs post.

[–] tangeli@piefed.social 13 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

Is ChatGPT a legal entity competent to violate copyright law? I don't think that's likely.

I do think OpenAI violated copyright law by copying song lyrics and other media to use them as input to their LLM systems, to embed the essence of them into their LLMs for commercial benefit. Judging by the valuations of the companies that do not yet have significant income compared to the investments, on the face of it, the IP they copied, often without license, as far as I know, is fantastically valuable.

[–] stephen01king@piefed.zip 7 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Does that mean song lyric websites with ads also violate copyright laws?

[–] tangeli@piefed.social 8 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

According to Are Song Lyrics Copyrighted? How the Law Works, unless their use is 'fair use' or they have a license, then they are violating copyright, if I understand the article correctly. I believe that site explains laws in the United States. It probably varies somewhat by jurisdiction, so I expect it would depend on who owns the website and where they are based.

[–] jqubed@lemmy.world 11 points 21 hours ago

To tag along with this, I remember this becoming an issue 10 or 15 years ago and a lot of the big lyrics websites were forced to reach licensing agreements with the songwriting groups like ASCAP and BMI (they collect and distribute royalties on behalf of the writers). I think a couple sites tried going to court to claim fair use but lost pretty quickly. That’s pretty established law going back to the earliest days of music publishing. Just because they were publishing online instead of printing up songbooks doesn’t mean the laws change.

[–] stephen01king@piefed.zip 2 points 21 hours ago

From the article, it doesn't look like these websites should be legal. Musixmatch also doesn't fall under fair use, I would think.

[–] conorab@lemmy.conorab.com 3 points 17 hours ago

I understand (to agree degree) going after AI companies for reproducing the lyrics in a way that would not normally be protected by copyright but outright scraping is going too far from a moral standpoint.

There’s a good argument to be made about abusing their resources to do the scraping as I’ve heard complaints of site owners getting overwhelmed by AI crawlers but provided you’re not doing that I think scraping should be allowed generally speaking even if the operator disallows it, since without that search engines break and archival (especially to prove malice) go out the window.

I’m inclined to take an approach of “you can ingest whatever you want, but you are liable for reproduction, and if preventing reproduction is too onerous, then you probably should get the licences to permit it or don’t ingest that data”. Even that has some caveats since that reasoning would decimate social media services and personal/community spaces if actually enforced which is kinda what Safe Harbor helps protect.