Hi everyone,

I'm an independent artist based in Europe, and I'm trying to better understand how copyright disputes work with different music distributors.

From what I've read, if someone files a copyright claim against your music and you submit a DMCA counter-notice, many distributors require you to consent to the jurisdiction of a U.S. federal court if you live outside the U.S.

This is what worries me.

I'm not talking about intentionally copying anyone's work. My concern is that, with the enormous amount of music released every day, it's possible to unknowingly create something that another person believes infringes their composition. Whether they're right or wrong would ultimately have to be decided somewhere.

As a European artist, I'm uncomfortable with the idea that if such a dispute arose, I'd potentially have to defend myself in a U.S. court and hire a U.S. attorney, which would likely cost far more than I could afford. I'd much rather have any dispute resolved in Europe.

I was just wondering if there are any distributors that handle this differently, or if consenting to U.S. jurisdiction is simply something every artist has to accept when distributing to the major streaming platforms.

This question comes from personal experience, as I've had a few songs receive copyright claims that I believe may have been made in bad faith, so I'm trying to be better prepared in the future.

If anyone from Europe has been through this or has any experience with it, I'd really appreciate hearing your thoughts.

I've been developing ways to sew and wire some rather impressive light-up clothes that look like they come straight from the Tron movies. Whenever I wear this gear to events, conventions, or just out and about, I get people who ask me if I sell them or if I do commissions. My question is whether or not I could legally sell this stuff on platforms like Etsy.

If I can do so, what is the line, so to speak, of how close I'm able to get to Disney's property without breaking copyright? Obviously, I won't be listing these garments as "Tron Costumes" or using the names of other characters or anything, nor would they be designs directly taken from the movies, but how different would the designs have to be? Can I keep the sort of circuitry-inspired angular designs? Could I sell the back-mounted disks? Would the disks have to look completely different?

Thank you for any advice!

“Foundational principles of copyright law dictate that copying protected sound recordings for the purpose of developing a commercial AI product like Udio’s requires permission from rightsholders,” Sony alleged in its complaint. “Otherwise, such AI offerings will erode the value of the artistic works that comprise the essential raw materials that allow them to function in the first place. If left unmoored from existing and longstanding legal constraints, such products could supplant, rather than support, genuine human creativity.”

"TL;DR: Mozilla’s translation bot on Support Mozilla (that is currently overwriting user contributions is based on the closed source, copyright infringing LLM, Google Gemini." (Article)