{"pk":65653,"title":"Man with Machine: The Unaddressed Copyright Issues of Mixed Musical Works","subtitle":null,"abstract":"<p>The copyrightability of mixed musical works, which contain a blend of human and generative AI elements, is an issue of increasing prevalence in copyright law. While there has been some discussion on the copyright status of fully generative AI works, this mainly resides in state law, and much of the federal policy found in Copyright Guides published by the United States Copyright Office is a non-binding opinion. Additionally, the same circuit courts contradict themselves, as seen with the differing views on the fair use of generative AI works in the Ninth Circuit Cases of <em>Bartz v. Anthropic PBC</em> (2024) and <em>Kadrey v. Meta</em> (2023). These issues combine to create a copyright “Dead Man’s Land” where the U.S. Copyright Office is forced to inspect mixed musical works on a case-by-case basis: an inefficient and ineffective mess for the modern day. This paper proposes that Congress pass legislation further itemizing the components of mixed musical works and only allowing generative AI to be used in one such component, alongside integrating state legislation. This policy would allow the U.S. Copyright Office to evaluate all mixed musical works under a unified framework. With the increase of artists creating mixed musical works, this solution only becomes more necessary as time progresses.</p>","language":"eng","license":{"name":"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0","short_name":"CC BY 4.0","text":"Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.\r\n\r\nNo additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0"},"keywords":[{"word":"copyright"},{"word":"generative AI"},{"word":"federal law"},{"word":"intellectual property law"},{"word":"copyright law"},{"word":"music"},{"word":"musical works"},{"word":"state law"},{"word":"fair use"},{"word":"sampling"}],"section":"Article","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8m1095tp","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Sam","middle_name":"Nariman","last_name":"Daftary","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of California, San Diego","department":""}],"date_submitted":"2026-05-11T21:42:34.596449Z","date_accepted":"2026-05-13T01:29:59.564100Z","date_published":"2026-05-13T15:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/ucsdulr/article/65653/galley/50316/download/"}]}